TacAI use of canister

[Bulletpoint]

I noticed that scout cars with canister rounds will use their canister shot when they spot enemies in buildings close by.

This is basically useless, as buildings offer hard cover. The chances of causing casualties with canister against targets in buildings is very low.

In my opinion it would be better if the TacAI chose HE for these targets and reserved the canister rounds for targets in the open/vegetation/soft cover.

[IICptMillerII]

ever see a golf ball go through a house/car window? Imagine a thousand golf balls, going much much faster, going through the window and everything around the window. Now imagine there are people in the room on the other side of the window. Definitely not useless. I've seen canister shred infantry in buildings, especially buildings like barns. Everything seems fine to me. 

[Cobetco]

I have to agree with Miller the Tac AI's use of canister on buildings isn't necessarily a bad thing. I seem the recall CM2 dividing Buildings into different categories, stone and wood. and I only remembered that because I just played through the FI-GL Mission "Men with suspicious hats" which involves firing HE into those nice Italian plaster and stone buildings, and having not played FI for a while i forgot about how much more damage HE does to stone buildings. I think i was shredding whole squads with a round or two. So HE is preferable in that circumstance, but against the mostly wooden buildings in BN, FB and RT? I don't think its too much of an issue to shoot canister. 

I will also point out the 37mm HE isn't very potent either.

 

Edited December 2, 2016 by Cobetco

[Bulletpoint]

4 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

ever see a golf ball go through a house/car window? Imagine a thousand golf balls, going much much faster, going through the window and everything around the window. Now imagine there are people in the room on the other side of the window. Definitely not useless.

Reality is another thing, and I think you are thinking about American Civil War cannons. This is a 37mm gun, I doubt it launches thousands of golf ball sized pellets

In this game, I'm not seeing canister do much against targets in proper buildings. Not talking about barns. I would say barns are soft cover, and I'm fine with canister being used against that.

 

4 hours ago, Cobetco said:

I will also point out the 37mm HE isn't very potent either.

It's perfectly good against troops in modular buildings though. Needs a couple more shots to get the job done maybe, but that's no problem since it's faster firing and usually carries much more ammunition than the bigger guns.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[IICptMillerII]

14 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Reality is another thing. In this game, I'm not seeing canister do much against targets in proper buildings, not barns. I would say barns are soft cover, and I'm fine with canister being used against that.

I mentioned barns specifically because I've noticed canister shot to be very effective against it, but I have also seen my Stuarts engage infantry in regular residential houses with canister to good effect. It both causes casualties and creates instant suppression. The second one being as important to the first in any firefight. So even if the canister rounds aren't killing hordes of enemy soldiers per shot, its pinning them which allows me to maneuver, close with and destroy the enemy with other assets. 

I understand the worry of wasting ammo. I find that US squads run out of Thompson ammo nearly instantly, and I always try to use the 'Target Light' command to reduce the use of Thompson and bazooka ammo. But the reality of combat is that it is inherently inefficient. You aren't always going to have the right ammo for the right shot at the right moment. In fact most of the time you don't, at least I don't. Its more of a 'use what you have at hand' kind of thing. 

I think that messing with the TacAI, or allowing the player to chose exactly what type of ammo is used in exactly what type of situation is overkill and would just lead to more problems. Personally I find the TacAI in CM to be superb. Its not perfect, but then again nothing is, especially men acting in the extremely stressful environment of combat. If there is any argument, it should be that the TacAI is in fact too good in combat, but that is an argument for another thread (and one I don't actually believe either, just saying that if you had to pick a flaw it would be on the side of too good verses not good enough) In Black Sea I had an issue with the TacAI where Bradley's were not engaging enemy armored vehicles (specifically tanks) with their TOW missiles, even at ranges beyond 1-2 km. They would always default to their autocannon. However the most recent patch to Black Sea solved this issue for me. This is all to say that again, the TacAI is not perfect and bugs exist, but I have good faith in Battlefront that if there are bugs, they will be addressed. It just may take a while, understandably due to limited staff and resources.

Either way I do not think your issue is a bug, its a user preference. So I would argue that the solution to your problem is yours to come up with. The use of target arcs to restrict fires or the use of the 'Target Light' command will both ensure that any canister shot equipped vehicles do not use it against targets you do not want it used against. It won't work 100% of the time but it should work most of the time, thus greatly reducing your issue. 

[A Canadian Cat]

14 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

I think that messing with the TacAI, or allowing the player to chose exactly what type of ammo is used in exactly what type of situation is overkill and would just lead to more problems.

One of which would be yet another place where the player has an advantage over the AI.

14 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

Personally I find the TacAI in CM to be superb. Its not perfect, but then again nothing is, especially men acting in the extremely stressful environment of combat.

+1

[Bulletpoint]

4 minutes ago, IanL said:

14 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

I think that messing with the TacAI, or allowing the player to chose exactly what type of ammo is used in exactly what type of situation is overkill and would just lead to more problems.

One of which would be yet another place where the player has an advantage over the AI.

First of all, I am not asking to have complete control over what happens in any situation, I just ask that the TacAI will make sensible choices, just like it fires AP at tanks and HE against troops.

Secondly, improving the TacAI decision making would also benefit the AI. Actually it would boost the AI more than the human player, because as a human, I know that I can just put down a direct fire order at a house, and then HE will be used.

But the AI cannot do that. Which means it will fire ineffectual canister while I can fire HE. This is an additional handicap for the AI.

[A Canadian Cat]

Ah, my bad I thought you were asking for a command to control what munition was fired. Yes, I agree 100% with fixing things like goofy ammo choices should be coded into the TacAI. For the reasons you just stated.

[user1000]

The cannister shot goes through the window and ricochets everywhere inside buildings very deadly.

[Bulletpoint]

2 hours ago, user1000 said:

The cannister shot goes through the window and ricochets everywhere inside buildings very deadly.

If that's true then I wish they would make the canister deadly against troops in buildings. It's not what I currently see.

I think the game should reflect real life, and also give our pixeltroops a decent understanding of what munition to use against what target.

Of course, if they want to make it so that inexperienced troops sometimes grab the wrong ammunition off the shelf and fire HE at tanks and AP at infantry, then that could be interesting as well.

Edited December 6, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[Pak40]

On 12/2/2016 at 9:20 AM, Bulletpoint said:

I noticed that scout cars with canister rounds will use their canister shot when they spot enemies in buildings close by.

This is basically useless, as buildings offer hard cover. The chances of causing casualties with canister against targets in buildings is very low.

In my opinion it would be better if the TacAI chose HE for these targets and reserved the canister rounds for targets in the open/vegetation/soft cover.

This does depend on the building, however, if all you see of an enemy soldier is his face or upper torso sticking out of a window then I'd say that canister has a better shot at killing that soldier than a 37mm HE round.

[Bulletpoint]

6 hours ago, Pak40 said:

This does depend on the building, however, if all you see of an enemy soldier is his face or upper torso sticking out of a window then I'd say that canister has a better shot at killing that soldier than a 37mm HE round.

If it's so good then why doesn't canister work against troops in buildings in the game?

I just confirmed with my opponent, and he said the several shots of canister fired caused no damage. But one single 37mm shell took out four of his troops in a building just before that.

[Pak40]

On 12/7/2016 at 2:01 AM, Bulletpoint said:

If it's so good then why doesn't canister work against troops in buildings in the game?

I just confirmed with my opponent, and he said the several shots of canister fired caused no damage. But one single 37mm shell took out four of his troops in a building just before that.

I'm not saying that that is how the game works, it's just my personal opinion. It's a lot easier to hit a target with buckshot than with a single round, law of averages. Obvisouly the target has to be visible because buckshot wont have much penetration. Probably in your particular case your soldiers were all lying down when the canister was fired.

And like I said, it depends on the type of building. IIRC, CM only models two strengths of buildings, light and heavy. A 37mm HE shell in reality wouldn't have much effect on a heavy building like stone. For example, Panther HE shells couldn't dent the stone buildings in the Krinkelt-Rocherath battle so they switched to AP which could get through the hard stone. So, IF your opponent sticks his face out the window briefly and you squeeze off a quick shot, I think you're going to have better luck hitting him with 100 little balls that spread out than with one single light 37mm projectile - just my opinion. 

But I do admit, that if it's a light building, 37mm HE or AP should be able to do some damage through the building walls and should be the better choice rather than the canister.

[Bulletpoint]

9 hours ago, Pak40 said:

I'm not saying that that is how the game works, it's just my personal opinion. It's a lot easier to hit a target with buckshot than with a single round, law of averages. Obvisouly the target has to be visible because buckshot wont have much penetration. Probably in your particular case your soldiers were all lying down when the canister was fired.

They were in fact sitting up, that's how the scout car spotted them by the window.

My question was not about real life, but about the game. If canister works against troops in buildings in real life, then it should also work in the game. And vice versa. And the TacAI should generally choose the right tool for the right job.

[Pak40]

8 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

They were in fact sitting up, that's how the scout car spotted them by the window.

My question was not about real life, but about the game. If canister works against troops in buildings in real life, then it should also work in the game. And vice versa. And the TacAI should generally choose the right tool for the right job.

Were they sitting up for all the subsequent shots of canister? Sounds dubious to me. So maybe they lucked out with the initial canister shot and ducked for the rest?

But let's be honest, in real life when the soldiers see the barrel of a tank or scout car point directly at them, they are going to take cover(if they see the tank), they won't just sit there and leave their bodies exposed. There's a lot of little things that would happen in real life that don't happen in this game. Another example is peeking around corners - In real life a soldier can peek around a corner of a building without exposing anything but his head. In the game, he would have to expose his entire body around the corner in order to see. So saying how weapons working in real life should also work the same in the game isn't quite an accurate statement.

[Bulletpoint]

2 minutes ago, Pak40 said:

Were they sitting up for all the subsequent shots of canister? Sounds dubious to me. So maybe they lucked out with the initial canister shot and ducked for the rest?

No, they ducked down and the armoured car lost sight of them, then it fired another canister shot at another building where the troops were visible, then a third one at the first building when the troops there popped up again.

3 minutes ago, Pak40 said:

So saying how weapons working in real life should also work the same in the game isn't quite an accurate statement.

Im just saying the general end result should be comparable, that's all. If a weapon is generally effective against a certain target in real life, then it should (generally) be effective against the same kind of target in the game.

Of course there will be bad 'dice rolls' and all that, but the bottom line is that the TacAI in this situation chooses ammunition that is pretty much useless against builings, when it could use effective 37mm HE.

[Vanir Ausf B]

5 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

TacAI in this situation chooses ammunition that is pretty much useless against builings, when it could use effective 37mm HE.

What was the range?

[Bulletpoint]

13 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

What was the range?

It was very close, around 80 metres if I remember.

[Michael Emrys]

6 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

It was very close, around 80 metres if I remember.

That's not very close for canister. That's actually starting to get close to its effective range limit.

Michael

[Bulletpoint]

19 minutes ago, Michael Emrys said:

7 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

It was very close, around 80 metres if I remember.

That's not very close for canister. That's actually starting to get close to its effective range limit.

In the interest of exactness, I went back and checked the savegame.

I was ordering the scout car to area fire at a house 81m away, but it spotted some infantry in another house at 60m distance and engaged them with canister instead of its given target. Then it started firing HE at the targeted house but quickly spotted infantry in a house at 122m distance and started firing canister at them instead. Then it went back to firing HE at the given target.

Edited December 10, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[Vanir Ausf B]

I did some testing on this. M8 armored cars against spotted MG42 team in independent commercial building at ~80 meters. I did not give the M8s any targeting orders, just let them do their own thing.

n=50

The M8 chose canister first on 3 out of 50 iterations. On most of the other 47 it favored HE but occasionally would even use the coax machine gun first. The canister was much less effective than HE but did cause a couple of KIA.

This seems to be in-line with the expected random variation in munition usage typically seen from the AI in CM games.
 

[Bulletpoint]

8 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

I did some testing on this. M8 armored cars against spotted MG42 team in independent commercial building at ~80 meters. I did not give the M8s any targeting orders, just let them do their own thing.

n=50

The M8 chose canister first on 3 out of 50 iterations. On most of the other 47 it favored HE but occasionally would even use the coax machine gun first. The canister was much less effective than HE but did cause a couple of KIA.

This seems to be in-line with the expected random variation in munition usage typically seen from the AI in CM games.

Thank you for testing it out. What experience level were the crews? In my game, they were green.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Regular 

[Pak40]

On 12/10/2016 at 11:29 AM, Michael Emrys said:

That's not very close for canister. That's actually starting to get close to its effective range limit.

Michael

I'm not sure what the effective range is but I know that the canister doesn't burst apart until around 100 ft (30m). Seems like 80m would be the sweet spot.

 

[Michael Emrys]

4 hours ago, Pak40 said:

I'm not sure what the effective range is but I know that the canister doesn't burst apart until around 100 ft (30m). Seems like 80m would be the sweet spot.

 

I don't know what the official specs are either, but I think there are a couple of points worth remembering. One is that they are steel balls which are less dense than lead shot would be and also not very aerodynamic, which adds up to them losing velocity rather quickly. The other thing, which may in fact be even more important, is that as the pattern spreads out it too becomes less dense so that the likelihood of actually being hit also drops off. While I expect that you are right that 80 meters is probably within its useful range, it might not be by a large margin. It would be nice to have some hard numbers and even informed opinion would be good to have.

Michael