Small arms casualties - tank crews

[SgtHatred]

39 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

This thread could be filed under 'be careful what you ask for because you may get it'. Like Strykers that don't reload and Stugs that don't fire their mgs.

Sure, but vehicles with dead crews don't reload or fire either.

[snarre]

about last video , it tjust player fault if you ceep tank  unbuttoned on that gind place . 

[Dennis50]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup, getting the right balance between crew safety and maintaining vehicle capabilities has been a challenge since CMBO days.  Unfortunately this is one of those behaviors that is extremely sensitive to a variety of specific conditions.  What works great 90% of the time might wind up being very bad for 10%.  Players will focus on the 10% instead of the 90%, which is understandable.  The question is if the 10% is what one would expect in the real world.  The problem is if we try to reduce the 10% we start to negatively affect the 90%.  In this situation, if we had crews be more conservative people would complain less about crews being picked off but more critical that their vehicles didn't do things like maintain the capability to shoot at stuff.

There's no perfect answer to this. However, we are always willing to look at vehicle specific situation where it appears the balance is significantly out of whack.

Steve

I agree ..take a long hard look at it, but if it is going to mean that the only way to butter it up is going to turn the vehicle in question into a super human unstoppable killing machine, I would opt to leave it alone for now.

1 hour ago, MikeyD said:

This thread could be filed under 'be careful what you ask for because you may get it'. Like Strykers that don't reload and Stugs that don't fire their mgs.

I've been down that road of 'be careful what you ask for because you may get it' more than once in my life time. It usually turns out that I should have kept my mouth shut!

All in all ...it's just an amazing game. Just my opinion though. Good job guys.

 

[Rokko]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

As I said, you can not find me one TacAI behavior that doesn't have someone voicing a complaint, concern, or suggestion for change.  Because of that we tend to ignore more-or-less one off, marginally important, or situational specific complaints because if we didn't we'd never get anything else done.  Instead we look for ones, like this, that spark a significant conversation backed up by attempts to quantify what the problem is/isn't.  Now that this issue has risen to that level... we're now looking into it.

This is how we've handled things since 1999 and it's a system that, while not perfect, works pretty well.  Hindsight is always 20/20 and generally speaking anything we fix today probably was mentioned by someone before.  Probably more than once. 

Steve

Well, I just felt JoMc67s comment didn't deserve the snarky reply it got

Besides, I have a feeling that this issue is closely related to the high mortality rate of halftrack gunners and that generally there is an issue with the TacAI shooting more accurately at people in vehicles than it shoots at people out in the open or behind walls or other cover.

Just to be clear, this is just a hunch I have and I dont have any hard data to back that up. Also I don't expect anyone to move a finger just because I have a hunch.

[sttp]

1 hour ago, snarre said:

about last video , it tjust player fault if you ceep tank  unbuttoned on that gind place

In case you're referring to me, I unbuttoned all 3 tanks just to test the very issue we're talking about in this thread.... 

And besides, isn't blaming the TC/gunner casualties on a player's "poor tactics" kinda missing the point? This is a game, after all, and players will make all kinds of decisions that are slightly better or slightly worse than some other alternatives. That's what games do.

And here people are talking about a tactical decision that's not even made by the player -- it's the AI unbuttoning a vehicle that the player has ordered to stay buttoned. So the real question is, does the AI punish a player's poor tactical decisions at the appropriate level? I think not, that the punishment (insta-dead TCs) is too harsh... but I'm not really advocating for a change here, since the alternative takes the balance way back in the other direction.

[Ultradave]

On April 2, 2016 at 3:13 PM, Andrew H. said:

The action is near Chaumont center.

 

I'm on a Mac, if that matters.

 

 

I took a look at the second one. The Stug on top of the hill has US troops in front of it, and also what turns out to be a MG team about 5m to it's right. And yes, the second crewman to put his head up is met with a hail of gunfire. But there are enemy soldiers right there. So close that when he backs up he runs over them. So it could be they are trying to ward off close attacks? 

[snarre]

i know what they talking about stug mid version mg gunner problem , personaly i dont have any gind problem whit this because i know how they behave, sou i can awoid that too. Plus some other all ready sayed if them behaiving get started to chance , they can get then mayby too passive and dont use mg at all. 

Edited April 7, 2016 by snarre

[A Canadian Cat]

30 minutes ago, sttp said:

And besides, isn't blaming the TC/gunner casualties on a player's "poor tactics" kinda missing the point? This is a game, after all, and players will make all kinds of decisions that are slightly better or slightly worse than some other alternatives. That's what games do.

No it is the point. We want the game to, on average, reward good choices and as you say punish poor ones. Considrr Steve's thoughts earlier about the evolution of how the MG configuration evolved. If unbuttoned MG gunners were not taking casualties them why develop remote controlled MGs? Now there could be room for tweaking in the game if Steve feels like it. Perhaps a second crew member would be reluctant to follow their lost comrade and the crew instead should try to get out of the area. But who am I to say, I have not been bothered by the current behavior.

[snarre]

10 minutes ago, IanL said:

No it is the point. We want the game to, on average, reward good choices and as you say punish poor ones. Considrr Steve's thoughts earlier about the evolution of how the MG configuration evolved. If unbuttoned MG gunners were not taking casualties them why develop remote controlled MGs? Now there could be room for tweaking in the game if Steve feels like it. Perhaps a second crew member would be reluctant to follow their lost comrade and the crew instead should try to get out of the area. But who am I to say, I have not been bothered by the current behavior.

thanks IanL you sayed what i thinked but what i coulden write , because my horible english writing. Mutch more easyer  to talk than write . ugh!! 

[A Canadian Cat]

Oh I see. I was wondering because I agreed with everything else you said. I only speak English so i can confidently say that you are much better at English than I am at your language.

[Dynaman216]

Sorry, this behavior would happen a couple of times and then the survivors of the platoon/company/battalion in short order would not continue it where as in the game it will happen over and over and over again.  As others have pointed out the rapidity with which it happens is also indefensible.  I've not read a LOT about infantry combat versus stugs but taking them out with small arms fire as the crew pops out one at a time is not a tactic that ever came up.

[JoMac]

8 hours ago, Rokko said:

To be fair - the issue has been around for more than a year.

I remember explicitely mentioning it in the briefing of my CMRT Right Hook at Sopockinie scenario to caution players not to get their StuGs to close to anything that can shoot back.

 

8 hours ago, Rokko said:

To be fair - the issue has been around for more than a year.

I remember explicitely mentioning it in the briefing of my CMRT Right Hook at Sopockinie scenario to caution players not to get their StuGs to close to anything that can shoot back.

Yeap, and this issue has been raised several times since CMBN...

Edited April 8, 2016 by JoMc67

[Champagne]

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

US Squads are damned lethal at 250-400m range

Are they ever! They hardly ever miss a squad leader and never miss a tank commander's head before the tank commander ducks out of harm's way!

They are SERIOUSLY good marksmen.

With regard to the issue that is the main focus of this thread -- I would like to thank Battlefront for taking a good look at the issue of Stug crews popping up and being killed with head shots despite being ordered to stay buttoned.

Possible solutions might be to make the marksmen a little less talented, make the crew obey the Button Up order OR make the crew MUCH faster in ducking back down when things get dangerous.

 

 

Edited April 8, 2016 by Champagne

[Vergeltungswaffe]

18 minutes ago, Champagne said:

...make the crew obey the Button Up order OR make the crew MUCH faster in ducking back down when things get dangerous.

 

 

This has been exactly my take the whole time.  +1

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, MikeyD said:

This thread could be filed under 'be careful what you ask for because you may get it'. Like Strykers that don't reload and Stugs that don't fire their mgs.

For those of you who Beta Tested Shock Force, you'll remember that's exactly what we had in place.  A Stryker would not reload unless the player told it to unbutton.  Which caused untold gnashing of teeth and slews of "bug reports" about Strykers that wouldn't fire when ordered.  It turns out nobody wanted to micro manage reloading the guns and so nobody was unbuttoning them for reloading.  The result were dead Strykers because they didn't engage infantry as instructed.  Based on overwhelming tester "feedback" (IIRC it was more like threats against unborn children) we changed the behavior to be more-or-less the way it is now.

7 hours ago, Rokko said:

Well, I just felt JoMc67s comment didn't deserve the snarky reply it got

You think a snarky and disrespectful comment deserved something better than a snarky reply followed by a detailed non-snarky explanation?   Well, I suppose you're right.  I probably shouldn't have posted the non-snarky explanation

Quote

Besides, I have a feeling that this issue is closely related to the high mortality rate of halftrack gunners and that generally there is an issue with the TacAI shooting more accurately at people in vehicles than it shoots at people out in the open or behind walls or other cover.

We've had extensive discussions and tests done about this ever since CMBN was in beta testing.  The results have been mixed.  For the most part casualties for HT gunners are "tactical error" on the part of the player or simply bad luck.  This is partly because of the compromise we made with the logic used for Strykers.  Basically players expect their gunners to be available all the time except after they die.  Then, quite suddenly, they have a problem with it  

6 hours ago, sttp said:

In case you're referring to me, I unbuttoned all 3 tanks just to test the very issue we're talking about in this thread.... 

And besides, isn't blaming the TC/gunner casualties on a player's "poor tactics" kinda missing the point? This is a game, after all, and players will make all kinds of decisions that are slightly better or slightly worse than some other alternatives. That's what games do.

And here people are talking about a tactical decision that's not even made by the player -- it's the AI unbuttoning a vehicle that the player has ordered to stay buttoned. So the real question is, does the AI punish a player's poor tactical decisions at the appropriate level? I think not, that the punishment (insta-dead TCs) is too harsh... but I'm not really advocating for a change here, since the alternative takes the balance way back in the other direction.

This is the point we're going to be looking at some more.  Again, the problem is players have expectations that can't be met because they want things to be near perfect all the time AND for them to not have to micromanage things.  We're trying to do the best we can to deliver the best behavior for the least amount of micromanagement.  Obviously it's not easy to do that.

6 hours ago, IanL said:

No it is the point. We want the game to, on average, reward good choices and as you say punish poor ones. Considrr Steve's thoughts earlier about the evolution of how the MG configuration evolved. If unbuttoned MG gunners were not taking casualties them why develop remote controlled MGs?

Thanks for bringing this back up again.  To restate, roughly speaking:

1940-1942 = StuG with *no* MG shield or permanent MG mount

1942-1944 = StuG with MG shield and permanent MG mount

1944-1945 = StuG with remote MG

The development shows very clearly that the need to use the MG increased over time as did the need to protect the crew.  Obviously the "TacAI" of real StuG crews in 1942 was insufficient to fight without a shield, the "TacAI" of real StuG crews in 1944 were finding it difficult to fight with a shield.

This does not mean CM's TacAI is perfect, because it isn't.  What I'm saying here is that it has to be kept in context and the context says pretty clearly that it was getting dangerous to be a StuG crew member as the war went on.

 

3 hours ago, JoMc67 said:

Yeap, and this issue has been raised several times since CMBN...

Did you bother to read anything that I wrote in this thread so far?  Just curious because it sure doesn't seem like it.

Steve

 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Vergeltungswaffe said:

This has been exactly my take the whole time.  +1

This has been the primary problem since CMBO.  And that is when the player says "stay up to man the weapon and have better situational awareness" the game tries to honor it.  We've had "quick ducking" before and found that didn't work out well either because the players were always convinced it was too quick when threats were low and never quick enough when threats were high.  Then we got into the complaints that "hey, if my guy had stayed up he could have saved the world, but your stupid game made him duck down and now my life is ruined".

I'm not joking.  OK, maybe stretching the truth a little   However, what I'm saying is basically true.  Players never want the guys to be unavailable when they think they could do something while exposed, but never want them to be risked and so want them to button up at the first whiff of a fart in the vehicle's direction.  Whatever way we have it will be "wrong" for something because players have imaginations.  Specifically, when something happens they don't like they imagine how it would be if it were the opposite way and then demand we change it to that way.  Imagination, but not very good with memory.  Because when we change it they don't like it and totally forgot they asked for it to be changed.

The problem with a hard and fast "don't unbutton unless explicitly ordered to unbutton" rule is that we tried this and it didn't work.  People hated it.  Hated it WAY more than the current logic.  Two situations they hated:

1.  Remote firing weapon needs reloading and to do that someone has to be exposed.  Players do NOT want to micromanage this, which means buttoned crews *must* be allowed to reload without explicit player permission.  And so that's the logic we have.

2.  Crew permanently buttoning at the slightest whiff of potential trouble.  This means the player can not control keeping his crew topside to man critical weapons systems even if it is risky.  We had this logic for a while and players complained a stray rifle shot or two would effectively neutralize any external weapon system.

3.  Crew that is already buttoned never, ever goes topside to defend the vehicle even when there is little chance of evading or engaging with protected weapons systems.  So yup, let that Bazooka team get into position because your StuG can't traverse quickly enough.

It's really not possible to have TacAI logic that is going to work equally well in all situations all the time.  However, I think it's likely that StuGs are a poster child for some sort of modification of their behavior in some way.  My thought is:

If the StuG crew suffers a topside casualty the vehicle automatically changes to Buttoned status.  The player can manually override this if he wants to, but otherwise the game favors keeping the main gun effective by not risking another crew member.

If a StuG is buttoned it will more likely stay buttoned than it currently does.  In other words, the amount of threat that needs to be present for it to unbuttoned should be raised.

That seems like a reasonable thing to change.

Steve

[Vergeltungswaffe]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

It's really not possible to have TacAI logic that is going to work equally well in all situations all the time.  However, I think it's likely that StuGs are a poster child for some sort of modification of their behavior in some way.  My thought is:

If the StuG crew suffers a topside casualty the vehicle automatically changes to Buttoned status.  The player can manually override this if he wants to, but otherwise the game favors keeping the main gun effective by not risking another crew member.

That seems like a reasonable thing to change.

Steve

Totally reasonable and I understand the why of the way it's always been. 

My regular opponents and I all use normal or less motivation AFV crews, as they seem to be more likely to button under fire.  I think it would be good if the thresholds were lowered across the board, to make the more motivated crews a bit more interested in self preservation.

[Battlefront.com]

Heh... see the edit I posted while you were writing that

Steve

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Perfect. 

[Bulletpoint]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

If the StuG crew suffers a topside casualty the vehicle automatically changes to Buttoned status.  The player can manually override this if he wants to, but otherwise the game favors keeping the main gun effective by not risking another crew member.

If a StuG is buttoned it will more likely stay buttoned than it currently does.  In other words, the amount of threat that needs to be present for it to unbuttoned should be raised.

Sounds reasonable, but I feel there's something missing from the argument. The more threat to the vehicle, the more chance of popping up to the machinegun to "defend" the vehicle. OK. But this defense is a bit meaningless, because the gunner is extremely unlikely to hit anything, and extremely likely to get hit, himself. The more enemy infantry, and the closer they are, the worse chances of defending the vehicle. The more suicidal the behaviour becomes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is because the gunner receives no "micro terrain protection modifier", whereas the enemy infantry outside the vehicle does receive a significant protection bonus. Would you look into adding a protection bonus to crewmembers?

[Champagne]

I'm very happy with Battlefront's decision to take a look at this issue. 

I've restarted the excellent Chaumont scenario from the Demo. I note that the US tanks begin the scenario unbuttoned. Sure enough, whenever a Jerry takes a small arms shot, he doesn't miss, even from hundreds of meters away.

IMHO, the right fix is to conclude that the first shot or first burst at the crew-member's head will miss so that he has a chance to duck. Right now, the poor crewmembers don't have a chance to duck. They stay popped up for too long after the report of gunfire.

Just my 2 cents.

 

 

[A Canadian Cat]

33 minutes ago, Champagne said:

I'm very happy with Battlefront's decision to take a look at this issue. 

Yeah, I suppose I'll live

33 minutes ago, Champagne said:

IMHO, the right fix is to conclude that the first shot or first burst at the crew-member's head will miss so that he has a chance to duck. Right now, the poor crewmembers don't have a chance to duck. They stay popped up for too long after the report of gunfire.

No way man that's what sniper are for. I think there is some serious observation bias going on here.  I have seen many, many TC's duck down successfully after the bullets start flying.  It just happened nicely in a CMBN game I am playing.  I suppose I could setup a quick comparison between CMBN and CMFB just to make sure.  I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to do that so anyone who wants to beat me to it feel free.

[JoMac]

5 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Sounds reasonable, but I feel there's something missing from the argument. The more threat to the vehicle, the more chance of popping up to the machinegun to "defend" the vehicle. OK. But this defense is a bit meaningless, because the gunner is extremely unlikely to hit anything, and extremely likely to get hit, himself. The more enemy infantry, and the closer they are, the worse chances of defending the vehicle. The more suicidal the behaviour becomes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is because the gunner receives no "micro terrain protection modifier", whereas the enemy infantry outside the vehicle does receive a significant protection bonus. Would you look into adding a protection bonus to crew members?

I highlighted your comment, and also think this might be exactly part of the issue...That, and how easy it is for Unbuttoned Crewmen to be instantaneously spotted compared to Ground Units (if Vehicle is spotted, then spotting Unbuttoned Crewman doesn't count ?...I mean, after all Crewman should be considered Hull Down and harder to spot for couple more spotting cycles, etc, depending on distance and other circumstances).  

[JoMac]

Overall and IMHO, Crew members should have a High Chance of becoming a Casualty (maybe up to 25% per incident ?) when under Sniper Fire, Ambushed or Close Range Combat, etc, and a much lower chance in a running battle...Crew is now aware of it's surroundings, and better chance of survival (better use of Micro-Terrain representing Crewmen ducking, Button-Up more frequently, etc). 

I liked how CMx1 handled it as it just felt right...Not much MG fire going out, because Crewman were almost always Buttoned Up.

Unless this isn't the case now, but I wonder if Small Arms can be directed at Vehicle Center ( the Aim point of Small Arms is at Center Mass of Vehicle and not center mass of unbuttoned crewman...Bullets go high, low, left, right, of Vehicle, etc ) thus giving a smaller chance of a Crew member being hit, and a better chance for Return Fire or Button Up. 

Anyways, just some things to throw out there. 

Edited April 8, 2016 by JoMc67

[JoMac]

14 hours ago, Vergeltungswaffe said:

This has been exactly my take the whole time.  +1

+2...That, and or a Better 'Savings Roll' or use of 'Micro-Terrain'.