Bud Backer Posted February 1, 2020 Share Posted February 1, 2020 (edited) See the image below for reference. In a recent battle against a human player, my opponent's Hellcat, selected in the picture, disobeyed their orders, and drove forward into the guns of my waiting King Tigers (which would be in the plowed field where the top-left two arrows are pointing). The Hellcat was given orders to reverse. It began to do so during the turn, and then two of my artillery rounds landed in the area circled. The Hellcat stopped and then went forward, past the building in the shot, and right toward my Tigers, which of course killed it instantly. Some context: You can see there are no contact Icons for my tanks. So However, the village has been under attack by my forces from the top of the map for some turns. The Hellcat shows some suppression now, but that is entirely gone in the turn that they drive forward, and their status changes from Nervous to Cautious, which suggests that they are actually less stressed than before. I can see that the unit would cancel a reverse order because heavy artillery landed some few dozen meters away. However, it moved forward, past cover and into the open, in the direction of the enemy (me). Despite not having contact icons, does this move make sense? Is this the retreat bug in vehicle form? If you need clarifications to make the situation easier to visualize please let me know. Edited February 1, 2020 by Bud Backer 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user1000 Posted February 1, 2020 Share Posted February 1, 2020 To me ai open top (hellcat) probably tried to get out of the kill zone, in the manual it talks about self preservation and how units were disobey sometime to save themselves. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freyberg Posted February 1, 2020 Share Posted February 1, 2020 It looks like he was in near panic - the AI gets pretty random in that situation... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user1000 Posted February 1, 2020 Share Posted February 1, 2020 Bad move for your opponent with hellcat. Open top vehicles and TDs should stay away from dense buildings and hull down outside them or hide in vegetation on the outskirts. half tracks should provide suppressing fire from the outskirts as well. If the weather is bad they are useless, because they cannot indirect fire with bad weather or night. stuart and sherman are ok to fight in cities if you must, but only close to friendly troops for protection. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bud Backer Posted February 1, 2020 Author Share Posted February 1, 2020 (edited) Quote It looks like he was in near panic Yes, that’s what I thought initially too. But... The screenshot is taken 15 seconds before the turn where the behaviour is odd. Why is it odd? Because in the next turn, it started a reverse move as ordered by my opponent. The suppression meter dropped to zero despite nearby shelling. The shelling appears to trigger cancellation of the move order and it then rolls forward. But the morale improves, going from nervous to cautious. So, if morale is better, and suppression is zero, why would it charge toward the enemy? Doesn’t the AI know that direction is where the enemy comes from? Edited February 1, 2020 by Bud Backer 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletpoint Posted February 1, 2020 Share Posted February 1, 2020 (edited) With a bit of creativity, we can explain away nearly any weird behaviour in this game. In this case, it actually seems quite rational to get away from the area of shelling, especially since they had no enemy contact markers to show that they would evade straight into the enemy line of fire. However, I can't remember seeing AFVs automatically try to evade incoming artillery before. So I don't know if that's what's actually going on here. It must have been very frustrating for your opponent to lose his key asset this way. Edited February 1, 2020 by Bulletpoint 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bud Backer Posted February 1, 2020 Author Share Posted February 1, 2020 Yes, we can explain it; you're absolutely right - and I did just that. The issue here is not whether one can plausibly explain what happened here in real life terms. It's whether this behaviour is bugged (going out of cover toward enemy lines) or if the crew was really freaked out and not thinking - in which case why is there no indicator. The key factors that are confusing here are that at the time it rolled out of cover, the hellcat has 0 suppression, and the crew was in "Cautious" morale state. Is that because the states are not updated real time and so they were in fact panicked and running but the indicators simply do not reflect that, or is it something else? @Battlefront.com maybe you might be able to shed some light? I'm not trying to split hairs here. What I want to know is if from a game UI perspective what would explain this. I know real life people do all sorts of crazy stuff. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquila-SmartWargames Posted February 1, 2020 Share Posted February 1, 2020 What happened to the 5th crewman? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bud Backer Posted February 1, 2020 Author Share Posted February 1, 2020 (edited) 10 hours ago, Aquila-SmartWargames said: What happened to the 5th crewman? When I was scouting the woods to the left of the field you see before the hellcat, the M18 spotted my recon team and fired on them. They returned fire and killed the commander (with SMGs at 250m!) and then went deeper into the woods. That would be 30+ minutes before this screenshot. Edited February 2, 2020 by Bud Backer 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted February 1, 2020 Share Posted February 1, 2020 A vehicle without a commander is a bit like a headless chicken. Morale plummets, situational awareness drops, and they start doing stupid things. There's another thread that argues that WWII tanks' spotting ability is too high. If you want to correct that just get your commander shot. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bud Backer Posted February 1, 2020 Author Share Posted February 1, 2020 (edited) 9 hours ago, MikeyD said: A vehicle without a commander is a bit like a headless chicken. Morale plummets, situational awareness drops, and they start doing stupid things. There's another thread that argues that WWII tanks' spotting ability is too high. If you want to correct that just get your commander shot. I've had multiple tank commanders get shot and not seen something like this. Morale here isn't exactly terrible. In fact, it improves from Nervous to Cautious, so it seems like morale is pretty good. Based on the cancel move order and go the opposite direction right after an artillery shell exploded nearby, I suspect that the commander loss is not the driving factor. The rest of the game they sat quietly and didn't do anything funky. I hope @Battlefront.com can give some insight - especially about UI refresh rates and if there is anything the player can see that would suggest this unit is going to lose their sanity. Edit: I want to make clear I am not complaining about this situation - what I am trying to get is some insight into how one can look at the UI and make any conclusions about why they did what they did. It's easy to explain the behaviour from a humanistic standpoint, what I am focusing on here is what does the game "say" about their state of mind in the moment. Edited February 2, 2020 by Bud Backer 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletpoint Posted February 5, 2020 Share Posted February 5, 2020 On 2/1/2020 at 4:01 PM, Bud Backer said: They returned fire and killed the commander (with SMGs at 250m!) Interesting. That should be impossible unless something changed in a recent patch, as SMGs in this game are supposed to be range capped at around 200m. Anyway, On 2/1/2020 at 2:44 PM, Bud Backer said: I'm not trying to split hairs here. What I want to know is if from a game UI perspective what would explain this. I know real life people do all sorts of crazy stuff. I completely understand, and I would like to know, too. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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