Please make a toggle to disable AI surrender

[Bulletpoint]

I often find that the AI surrenders just as my brilliant (?) plan starts to really come together and I'm ready for the final assault. To me, that feels disappointing, especially in the larger scenarios where I have spent many hours preparing, scouting, maneuvering, bombarding, etc.

I think it would be really nice to have a toggle in the game options to disable this, or at least a setting to use by the scenario designer for individual "fight to the death" scenarios.

(I know that the scenario designer can set reinforcements to arrive after thebattle ends, preventing AI surrender, but then my playtesters are confused and asking me why there are so many enemies listed as still alive in the end game screen, when the players have cleared out the whole map.. Also it seems a complicated way to do something simple).

Alternatively, instead of disabling surrendering completely, just make it so that when the AI reaches the surrender point, individual troops become much more likely to surrender, so you would have to move into the objective and take prisoners, but still be careful, as some enemies might continue to offer stubborn resistance (based on their motivation level etc.)

Also, based on realism, it's a bit odd that in the chaos of battle all enemy troops get the order to surrender at exactly the same time.

 

[Michael Emrys]

43 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I often find that the AI surrenders just as my brilliant (?) plan starts to really come together and I'm ready for the final assault. To me, that feels disappointing, especially in the larger scenarios where I have spent many hours preparing, scouting, maneuvering, bombarding, etc.

Yeah, sometimes I have wished for a "Just one more turn" option.

44 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Alternatively, instead of disabling surrendering completely, just make it so that when the AI reaches the surrender point, individual troops become much more likely to surrender, so you would have to move into the objective and take prisoners, but still be careful, as some enemies might continue to offer stubborn resistance (based on their motivation level etc.)

I like this idea and would like to see it implemented if possible.

46 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Also, based on realism, it's a bit odd that in the chaos of battle all enemy troops get the order to surrender at exactly the same time.

This too.

Michael

[Erwin]

+1

Hate having a lovingly crafted attack coming together... and the AI quits.  In RL that is wonderful.  But, in a game, it's awful.  Like coitus interruptus.

[A Canadian Cat]

I get the "... but I wanted to see how it turned out" feeling.  However, don't you guys think that the battle will be unsatisfying even then?  The AI usually surrenders when it is in pretty bad shape.  There it not really a lot of fun in just steam rolling over a handful of guys that are messed up and run at the sight of the wrong colour uniform.  Would that final attack really be enjoyable given there is no real resistance left?

[Bulletpoint]

Even broken enemy units can still be really dangerous, especially in dense terrain. And following my suggestion, some pockets of enemies might hold out, depending on motivation levels and local leadership. So I doubt it would be a walkover.

Remember that I am not asking to sweep the whole map. All I want is to finally reach my objectives for once, then hit cease fire and see how I did. Currently, with the early enemy total surrender, even many of the most elaborate scenarios with a series of objectives turn into simply "kill the enemies".

I hate starting a scenario and seeing 3 objective areas, knowing at the back of my head that I will either lose or win a total victory before reaching even the second one.

Edited August 17, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[Bulletpoint]

Also, Arnold agrees with me

Edited August 17, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[A Canadian Cat]

LOL got it.

[Michael Emrys]

3 hours ago, IanL said:

There it not really a lot of fun in just steam rolling over a handful of guys that are messed up and run at the sight of the wrong colour uniform.

Speak for yourself, buddy. I love those kinds of mop-up ops. (And no, I don't torture small animals.)

Michael

[Pak40]

On 8/16/2016 at 11:38 AM, Bulletpoint said:

Also, based on realism, it's a bit odd that in the chaos of battle all enemy troops get the order to surrender at exactly the same time.

 

When this happens I've never viewed it as a surrender of forces but rather a surrender of terrain. In other words, the last remaining forces decided that holding on to the terrain is not worth the cost and decide to pull out, i.e. surrender the terrain. The forces may be available in the subsequent battles if it's part of a campaign. However, I'm not sure what's really happening behind the scene. Is truly counted as a surrender of forces or a truce?

And what if a human player decides to quit a battle as part of a campaign? He currently has two options - cease fire (which the AI must accept), and surrender. Is there a technical difference? Do I get to keep my remaining troops with the cease fire option? It's probably all in the manual but I don't have it in front of me at the moment.

[Bulletpoint]

10 minutes ago, Pak40 said:

Is truly counted as a surrender of forces or a truce?

Surrender is surrender. I think a truce would be what you get by pressing Cease Fire.
 

11 minutes ago, Pak40 said:

cease fire (which the AI must accept), and surrender. Is there a technical difference?

If you surrender, you automatically lose and give the enemy a total victory, no matter how the battle was actually going.

If you cease fire, the result of the battle will be determined by how well you achieved your objectives and the other factors that grant you victory points.

 

[Pak40]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Surrender is surrender. I think a truce would be what you get by pressing Cease Fire.
 

If you surrender, you automatically lose and give the enemy a total victory, no matter how the battle was actually going.

If you cease fire, the result of the battle will be determined by how well you achieved your objectives and the other factors that grant you victory points.

 

Assuming that:

surrender = losing remaining pixeltrupen on the map & total defeat

cease fire = keep remaining pixeltrupen on map & accept current victory conditions

Why then would anyone ever want to surrender in a campaign? You would get the worst possible outcome AND lose all of your pixeltrupen that could have been used in future battles. And when the AI decides to "surrender" then it's programmed to use surrender and not cease fire? Kind of seems like the AI gets the short end of the stick in this case.

[Bulletpoint]

8 hours ago, Pak40 said:

Assuming that:

surrender = losing remaining pixeltrupen on the map & total defeat

cease fire = keep remaining pixeltrupen on map & accept current victory conditions

Why then would anyone ever want to surrender in a campaign? You would get the worst possible outcome AND lose all of your pixeltrupen that could have been used in future battles. And when the AI decides to "surrender" then it's programmed to use surrender and not cease fire? Kind of seems like the AI gets the short end of the stick in this case.

I believe that in a campaign, surrendering doesn't mean you lose all your troops and can't use them in following battles. It just means your performance gets rated as a total defeat. What that means for your campaign is up to the scenario designer.

So you could say "surrender" in this case means "unilateral withdrawal from the map, leaving all objectives to the enemy", whereas "cease fire" means "a mutually agreed truce where each side gets to keep the objectives they currently own".

There are currently no reason at all for the player to surrender against the AI, but it is somewhat useful in H2H matches. You're right that the AI gets the short end of the stick, always having to accept player-initiated cease fires, and always having to use the surrender option, itself.

It might be better to simply change the rules so that instead of surrender, the AI would offer a cease fire. Then it would be up to the player to accept or refuse. It would also give you those few extra turns needed to actually take your objectives before ending the battle.

 

Edited August 18, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[MOS:96B2P]

7 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

<Snip> It might be better to simply change the rules so that instead of surrender, the AI would offer a cease fire. Then it would be up to the player to accept or refuse. It would also give you those few extra turns needed to actually take your objectives before ending the battle.  

This sounds like the perfect solution.  (Unless it's hard to code or some techy type problem)  It would give the player the choice.  I hope this is something that can be done without a lot of programming headaches and something BFC would consider.    

[Erwin]

+1 again

"All I want is to finally reach my objectives for once, then hit cease fire and see how I did. Currently, with the early enemy total surrender, even many of the most elaborate scenarios with a series of objectives turn into simply "kill the enemies"."

This is for the majority who play vs AI.  It's unsatisfying and frustrating when "kill the enemy" is the way to win when one has exit objectives that one never gets to reach.

 

[A Canadian Cat]

11 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

It might be better to simply change the rules so that instead of surrender, the AI would offer a cease fire. Then it would be up to the player to accept or refuse. It would also give you those few extra turns needed to actually take your objectives before ending the battle.

Which is functionally exactly the same as "turn off auto surrender" since the AI already accepts any cease fire you offer.

[Bulletpoint]

3 minutes ago, IanL said:

Which is functionally exactly the same as "turn off auto surrender" since the AI already accepts any cease fire you offer.

Well the idea would obviously be to change it so that the AI would *not* automatically accept any cease fire.

Or maybe it wasn't so obvious as I thought

[A Canadian Cat]

Oh, but that would be a big change and would mean that you could no longer end a game against the AI early unless you surrendered.

I recommend you keep your eye on the ball.  You guys want to be able to play your battle through until you are done I suggest you keep your request to "Please, provide a way to toggle off AI automatic surrender" or "Please, make is so the AI fights for longer than it does now".

Chances of BFC making a simple single change that does not effect anything else = small but non zero (the more people ask for the same thing the larger the small chance gets:-)

Chances of BFC making a change that has ripple effects and changes the behaviour requiring other adjustments = damn close to zero.

[Bulletpoint]

11 minutes ago, IanL said:

Oh, but that would be a big change and would mean that you could no longer end a game against the AI early unless you surrendered.

I recommend you keep your eye on the ball.

Well I'm just thinking aloud a bit as I usually do, like a brainstorm basically.

My main idea is still to simply disable AI auto-surrender. Then various big/small ideas came out of the discussion, and I'm just sharing my ideas around to see what people think.

You're right that disabling auto-ceasefire could have some side effects, but I don't think they would be that big of a deal. It might make some scenarios more difficult to win, if they are designed to have the total enemy force nearly impossible to break, and assume the player will be forced to cease fire after taking some limited number out of a bigger total number of objectives. Such scenarios are rare, in my experience, and even then the player would still be able to simply let the clock run out to reach the end-game screen.

Anyhow, I've suggested an idea and it seems a couple of people are generally in agreement. If you and BattleFront disagree, that's fine with me ... Not everybody sees stuff the same way after all.

 

[A Canadian Cat]

Cool - I certainly don't speak for BFC though.  But you didn't mean that I did I am sure.

Carry on with the idea flow.

[DasMorbo]

 

On 17.8.2016 at 5:29 PM, Bulletpoint said:

Also, Arnold agrees with me

On Topic:

I miss the options that were aviable in Close Combat. Those were Cease Fire, Retreat and Surrender. IIRC cease fire had to be mutual, so at times the AI would keep coming while you were desperately pleading for a cease fire. This left you just with the only option of retreating out of the AO if you didn't want your command to be anihilated. It was intense AND realistic if you ask me.

I think in Graviteam Tactics it is the same with cease fire.

Adding this feature would make the toggle unnecessary as you can decide in game if you accept a cease fire-proposal or not.

 

Already thought about opening a threat about it myself, nice to see this being brought up!

Edited August 19, 2016 by DasMorbo

[Bulletpoint]

3 hours ago, DasMorbo said:

I miss the options that were aviable in Close Combat. Those were Cease Fire, Retreat and Surrender.

When would you use "surrender", and what would be the consequences for your troops and for you as the player? Any penalty for fighting to the last man rather than surrendering?

[General Jack Ripper]

For what it's worth, I agree. A last second sneaky ninja move cut off, a massive coordinated attack that never launches, or simply the fact that your artillery hadn't knocked down that office building yet, are all reasons I dislike the AI's auto-surrender.

However, for the sake of "not wasting my time" it's an excellent feature. Putting a toggle switch to turn it on and off is a perfectly good request.

+1

[DasMorbo]

On 19.8.2016 at 9:19 PM, Bulletpoint said:

When would you use "surrender", and what would be the consequences for your troops and for you as the player? Any penalty for fighting to the last man rather than surrendering?

More the other way around:

'Surrender' is in the game and ''Retreat' would be new. Surrender counts your entire Command lost and no ground objectives achieved. Retreat would give you no points for ground objectives but would give you points for force preservation.

In real-life force-preservation is often very sensible and important, even paramount in western armies, unless 'fight to the last' orders are out.