Broken tacAI

[OlafP]

The tacAI seems to be very dysfunctional when it comes to infantry moving around corners of buildings, walls, and the like. In fact, entirely broken in some cases, I would say. I've found various bugs related to pathfinding in particular. Don't know if there is any point in posting this now, since I understand that there is a patch underway, but here is a typical example:

Btw. is this the proper place to post bugs?

Edited February 18, 2019 by OlafP

[A Canadian Cat]

Yes, this is the place to report bugs.

I'm going to need a little help with that video though. What do you think it shows? I see a team moving up finding cover and making contact only to get hit from multiple directions and taken out.

[JoMac]

It appears to me that he made 1x Way point behind the hedge or wall, but when gun fire broke out his troops dashed into the open.

Edited February 18, 2019 by JoMc67

[RockinHarry]

two things come in mind when watching this. 1. Enemy/friendly map edge setting (with regard to friendly/enemy side of walls/hedges ect.). 2. What does the "facing" exactly point at? IIRC "facing" relates either to a certain unit or terrain spot and the scouting troops possibly stick to a facing (seek cover towards) a spot not appropiate for the dangerous situation that just developed.

[OlafP]

What I think it shows? Isn't that obvious? I order them to hunt to and hide at the corner of the wall, and instead they move past the corner, then sprint out into the open through the hedge while opening fire at the enemy.

The order given is not the order executed.

JoMc67: The sprinting out in the open occurs before any gunfire, and my team is the one actually opening fire.

[Bulletpoint]

58 minutes ago, IanL said:

I see a team moving up finding cover and making contact only to get hit from multiple directions and taken out.

I see a team moving up to cover, then deciding to run out of cover the moment they spot nearby enemies.

Was your team broken?

Because in that case, it could be that the broken team spotted enemies, decided to run away, but they decided to run to a spot on the other side of the wall. Then they took the shortest path to that point, which was straight through the enemy line of fire.

[OlafP]

7 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I see a team moving up to cover, then deciding to run out of cover the moment they spot nearby enemies.

Was your team broken?

Because in that case, it could be that the broken team spotted enemies, decided to run away, but they decided to run to a spot on the other side of the wall. Then they took the shortest path to that point, which was straight through the enemy line of fire.

No, they were in perfectly fine condition. No nervous or rattled or anything. Suppression bar at zero.

I've never had troops run away simply from spotting the enemy before. I don't think they can even do that, although that would have been a nice feature.

[OlafP]

I've had a lot of these things happening. They seem to be almost always related to corners.

The "peek around corners" feature seems to be very buggy too.

[JoMac]

29 minutes ago, OlafP said:

I've had a lot of these things happening. They seem to be almost always related to corners.

The "peek around corners" feature seems to be very buggy too.

Yeah, as RH mentioned...I think it's a Corner Action-Spot issue per-say.

Basically (what I think happened here), your troops were still trying to fulfill it's requirement of moving into the Action-Spot (which happens to be both behind and in front of hedge), and so some troops ended-up moving forward (in front of hedge), then would've moved back behind again...However, since the gun-fire erupted and casualties happened your troops never fulfilled it's requirement (moving forward and back again behind hedge...which would normally take a few seconds). 

If you try the above again (and any similar circumstances in future) instead give an additional side-step way point (2x waypoints total...one left/right, then one forward), then I think your troops would have stopped at the hedge. 

Yeah, it's a Game Mechanics issue, and not sure if next Patch has anything included for this.

Edited February 18, 2019 by JoMc67

[Bulletpoint]

You got me curious, so I loaded this scenario up in the editor and made a special small test version.

I can't reproduce the running away when just moving a team around without enemies. Things seem to work as they should.

So I think it is caused by the team on hunt orders being caught out by spotting enemies while passing through the square with the wall. They then for some reason think they have to deploy to the other side of the wall.

So basically this would be a small bug in the TacAi code.

Possibly, when the TacAI decides to stop the hunting team, it then points them to the wrong side.

That's my hypothesis anyway.

[JoMac]

25 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

You got me curious, so I loaded this scenario up in the editor and made a special small test version.

I can't reproduce the running away when just moving a team around without enemies. Things seem to work as they should.

So I think it is caused by the team on hunt orders being caught out by spotting enemies while passing through the square with the wall. They then for some reason think they have to deploy to the other side of the wall.

So basically this would be a small bug in the TacAi code.

Possibly, when the TacAI decides to stop the hunting team, it then points them to the wrong side.

That's my hypothesis anyway.

Hmm, I think your Hypothesis could be...more correct-ish then mine (and I don't like being wrong).

[OlafP]

Bulletpoint: Did you replicate the facing order? I've run some more tests, and that seems to be crucial here. I can induce what I think is the intended behaviour (stopping at the wall corner, hiding, one soldier peeking, no fire) by changing the facing. 

I don't think it's a small bug when they just run out into the open like that. I have several examples of similar odd behaviour and most of the seem to be related to corners/peeking. I don't think I'm going to bother recording them until the patch is released. Maybe this is just one issue expressing itself in multiple different cases.

[Bulletpoint]

3 minutes ago, JoMc67 said:

Hmm, I think your Hypothesis could be...more correct-ish then mine (and I don't like being wrong).

It's a bit like quantum mechanics - while moving, a team is spread out (like a wave) but then when the movement is interrupted, the waveform collapses and the game needs to decide where the exact location of this team actually is. So it decides the team is in the square with the wall, but there's a side A and B, and it picks the wrong side...

Ok, I should get out more

[JoMac]

30 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

It's a bit like quantum mechanics - while moving, a team is spread out (like a wave) but then when the movement is interrupted, the waveform collapses and the game needs to decide where the exact location of this team actually is. So it decides the team is in the square with the wall, but there's a side A and B, and it picks the wrong side...

Ok, I should get out more

Actually, that's about what I was trying to say in my above post, but maybe not clear enough. 

[A Canadian Cat]

57 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I can't reproduce the running away when just moving a team around without enemies. Things seem to work as they should.

So I think it is caused by the team on hunt orders being caught out by spotting enemies while passing through the square with the wall. They then for some reason think they have to deploy to the other side of the wall.

Ah I see what you mean. The hunt order would get cancelled as soon as they spotted the enemy and with it the hide command too. So at that point they are free to act on thier own. With the over tendency to withdraw from fire fights in 2.00 I think we see this outcome. 

[Bulletpoint]

33 minutes ago, JoMc67 said:

Actually, that's about what I was trying to say in my above post, but maybe not clear enough. 

I think there's a difference though, because I read your post as saying the destination waypoint had positions both behind and in front of the hedge. But if you look closely, the destination point is actually well behind the hedges, it's located in the square with the bent wall segment.

23 minutes ago, IanL said:

With the over tendency to withdraw from fire fights in 2.00 I think we see this outcome. 

That's what I thought at first, too, but if you look closely, you see the guys start running before taking any real fire.

It's like when you order a team to hunt a long distance through forest, causing them to be spread out. Then when one of them spots an enemy, the whole team stops moving and drops down. And then they start to move/crawl towards the average centre point of their team (where the team icon is), because that's where the game engine considers the team to be officially located, even if members are scattered. That point becomes the rallying point.

But in this case, the rallying point is somehow set on the wrong side of the wall. Either by random because the game does not take sides into account, or because the team decides to gather on the other side of the wall compared to the spotted enemy contacts (which would make sense for low walls - they'd jump over and take cover)

[General Jack Ripper]

On ‎2‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 11:19 AM, OlafP said:

What I think it shows? Isn't that obvious? I order them to hunt to and hide at the corner of the wall, and instead they move past the corner, then sprint out into the open through the hedge while opening fire at the enemy.

The order given is not the order executed.

Actually it is.

You are not very familiar with how the 'Hunt' command works.

The team spotted enemy troops, which causes the string of orders attached to the Hunt command to self-cancel.

Which means the team won't hide or face, so they open fire instead.

Hunt is used as a "move until you see something" command. It's not a "move slowly this way then hide" command. Attaching other commands to a "Hunt" order only works properly if they don't see anything.

[37mm]

I suspect Ripper has it right... I've always found the "Hunt" command to be a bit of a risk in a potential CQB situation.

Try the experiment again with a short quick dash (or a crawl).

Also run the experiment at night/thick fog (so that the subjects cannot spot anything & cancel the Hunt/facing commands).

I reckon you'll see much improved behaviour but it'd be interesting to know.

[OlafP]

18 hours ago, General Jack Ripper said:

Actually it is.

You are not very familiar with how the 'Hunt' command works.

The team spotted enemy troops, which causes the string of orders attached to the Hunt command to self-cancel.

Which means the team won't hide or face, so they open fire instead.

Hunt is used as a "move until you see something" command. It's not a "move slowly this way then hide" command. Attaching other commands to a "Hunt" order only works properly if they don't see anything.

Uh, no this is nonsense. The hunt command certainly is not supposed to cause soldiers to Fast into incoming fire and it does not cancel the Hide-command when contact is reached. This is one of the most useful command-combos in CM, in fact, because it allows you to move to contact, stop and hold fire as soon as contact is reached. In other words, you can recon without engaging in a firefight. It has been a mechanism in CM since Barbarossa to Berlin. That is 17 years almost.

18 hours ago, 37mm said:

I suspect Ripper has it right... I've always found the "Hunt" command to be a bit of a risk in a potential CQB situation.

Try the experiment again with a short quick dash (or a crawl).

Also run the experiment at night/thick fog (so that the subjects cannot spot anything & cancel the Hunt/facing commands).

I reckon you'll see much improved behaviour but it'd be interesting to know.

Okay, do you really think this is not a bug and simply me being bad at the game, or are you trolling? From the manual:

"Infantry - this command maximizes the unit’s awareness for possible enemy contact. Soldiers advance slowly, weapons ready. Upon seeing an enemy unit, or when fired upon (even if the enemy is not seen) the unit stops immediately. This is a good command to use when enemy contact is imminent."

They are not supposed to run forward. Later in that paragraph, the devs even recommend to use this command in CQB: 

"Example - Hunt is very useful for cleaning out houses which are suspected to have enemy hiding inside, or as a “move to contact” order for tank".

I don't think either of those commands you suggest are appropriate in this situation, but that is rather irrelevant to the topic of this thread.

[OlafP]

Here is another video of a team suddenly changing to an entirely different action spot when there is a junction and a Face command involved:

This seems to be related to repositioning and junctions. The AI seemingly gets confused when there is a junction involved and sends all or part of the team to the wrong action spot.

Another reason why I don't think TacAI self-preservation is involved, is because TacAI self-preservation always issues either a Fast- or Slow-command, but the team in my example seem to be entirely orderless.

Edited February 21, 2019 by OlafP

[Bulletpoint]

3 hours ago, OlafP said:

Soldiers advance slowly, weapons ready. Upon seeing an enemy unit, or when fired upon (even if the enemy is not seen) the unit stops immediately.

The manual is wrong here. The unit only stops when actively spotting an enemy.

(or when taking enough fire to fill the suppression bar, which generally cancels any move order)

Edited February 21, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[Bulletpoint]

3 hours ago, OlafP said:

The hunt command [...] does not cancel the Hide-command when contact is reached. This is one of the most useful command-combos in CM, in fact, because it allows you to move to contact, stop and hold fire as soon as contact is reached. In other words, you can recon without engaging in a firefight.

I never knew this. Will have to try it out.

Edited February 21, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[37mm]

4 hours ago, OlafP said:

Uh, no this is nonsense. The hunt command certainly is not supposed to cause soldiers to Fast into incoming fire and it does not cancel the Hide-command when contact is reached. This is one of the most useful command-combos in CM, in fact, because it allows you to move to contact, stop and hold fire as soon as contact is reached. In other words, you can recon without engaging in a firefight. It has been a mechanism in CM since Barbarossa to Berlin. That is 17 years almost. 

You are confusing 'hunt' with the (in my opinion) superior "move to contact" order of CMx1.

The Dev's advice was misguided. For most house clearing situations, "quick" is recommended by veteran players (there was a recent thread about this in the CMSF2 forums).

I agree the 'hunt' command is dodgy in CQB situations & perhaps the Devs did not originally intend it to be such (in which case we can agree the behaviour is "bugged").

However it's also been like this for a long time... hence why I only use it when I'm expecting distant small arms fire (so, for me, it's a "move to contact" order NOT a "move to grenade range" order).

 

PS

Interestingly, I think the old "move to contact" order from CMx1 should more properly have been called a "Hunt" order & the newer CMx2 "Hunt" command renamed "move to contact".

 

Edited February 21, 2019 by 37mm

[37mm]

25 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

The manual is wrong here. The unit only stops when actively spotting an enemy.

(or when taking enough fire to fill the suppression bar, which generally cancels any move order)

The manual used to be right for the original CMSF as well as CMA... but seems to have changed with one of the engine updates.

[Xorg_Xalargsky]

Just tested a simple scenario (JTAC team vs. transport taxi) and it appears that the Hunt command does not cancel a Hide "at waypoint" command if a unit is spotted. You learn something every day...