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[bug] US infantry don't know when (not) to use AT4?


nikolai

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I've just got a very frustrating experience trying to ambush enemy armored units with Javelin. I had a rifle team with Javelin hidden inside a building and able to spot a BMP-3 in the distance (about 250 m). As soon as they spotted the vehicle, they started to fire their AT4 at it, revealing their position immediately. Of course, all the AT4 missed at such distance, BMP returned fire and all the team lied dead long before Javelin operator had a chance to fire his missile.

It looks like a bug in TacAI. The only workaround I could come up with is to never give Javelin to a team with AT4, and that is not cool at all...

Actually, according to the patch notes, a similar bug was "fixed" in 2.10. However, in 2.12 and 2.13 I still see rifle teams using their AT4 prematurely, revealing their position and getting wiped out before they can fire a Javelin.

Quote

 

********************************
v2.10 PATCH NOTES
********************************

BUG FIXES
 * FIXED: US antitank teams always fire AT4 before using Javelin

 

Video example:

https://streamable.com/s2kuzn

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Guys, do you have the same issue with AT4 and Javelin? What do you do about it?

Maybe I should have given some specific combination of orders to make soldiers keep hiding until they fire Javelin? Maybe there is a way to tell them to fire AT4 only at close targets and not waste them at 200+m distance? Or maybe my expectations of soldiers doing "the right thing" are plain wrong, and they are supposed to fire at everything they can without any intelligence?
 

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On 8/1/2020 at 9:01 PM, nikolai said:

I've just got a very frustrating experience trying to ambush enemy armored units with Javelin. I had a rifle team with Javelin hidden inside a building and able to spot a BMP-3 in the distance (about 250 m). As soon as they spotted the vehicle, they started to fire their AT4 at it, revealing their position immediately. Of course, all the AT4 missed at such distance, BMP returned fire and all the team lied dead long before Javelin operator had a chance to fire his missile.

It looks like a bug in TacAI. The only workaround I could come up with is to never give Javelin to a team with AT4, and that is not cool at all...

Actually, according to the patch notes, a similar bug was "fixed" in 2.10. However, in 2.12 and 2.13 I still see rifle teams using their AT4 prematurely, revealing their position and getting wiped out before they can fire a Javelin.

Video example:

https://streamable.com/s2kuzn

Great video.

Do you have that as a savegame?

This bug is near and dear to my heart...   I'm a beta, so I'll run with it from here.

Thanks for the clear documentation. (And how did you get 5 men to carry 5 AT4s and 3 Javelins??? Or, do they have help downstairs?)

Ken

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CMBS is an armor-heavy environment. Waste your Javelin on an APC and a minute later an MBT will round the corner. You see vehicles struggling with this choice too. Do you waste precious main gun rounds on a soft target or do you (ineffectively) stick with coax mg fire? BMP3 has more choices to make - the cannon-fired missile, the 90mm cannon, the 30mm autocannon or the (multiple) machine guns? Decisions, decisions.

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Hi Ken,

Quote

Do you have that as a savegame?

Attached the saved game. It's a simple contrived example to make sure that such stupid behavior is not caused by stress/casualties. The password for both sides is 123. Please, let me know if you have any other questions. I would be happy to help.

Quote

how did you get 5 men to carry 5 AT4s and 3 Javelins???

It's a rifle squad with all the heavy weapon from Stryker and without the assault team.

I believe when deciding whether to fire AT4 (or any other weapon), TacAI should weigh chances to destroy the target against importance of staying concealed. In my example, in the beginning of the turn I would expect TacAI to decide not to fire AT4 (low chances of success and the enemy probably cannot see the team), but decide to fire Javelin (high chances of success outweigh importance of concealment). As soon as they fire Javelin, the concealment is gone and nothing prevents TacAI from firing AT4 at other targets even though the chances are still low.

Thanks,
Nikolai

Test 003.bts.zip

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7 hours ago, MikeyD said:

CMBS is an armor-heavy environment. Waste your Javelin on an APC and a minute later an MBT will round the corner. You see vehicles struggling with this choice too. Do you waste precious main gun rounds on a soft target or do you (ineffectively) stick with coax mg fire? BMP3 has more choices to make - the cannon-fired missile, the 90mm cannon, the 30mm autocannon or the (multiple) machine guns? Decisions, decisions.

No. That's not what I'm talking about. Using Javelin against an APC is fine if APC is pretty far, because there's a chance that the team will die before they have an opportunity to use it against a tank. Though, if APC is close, I'd like TacAI to try and use AT4 first.

What I'm talking about is pretty different. In this case TacAI decides to use Javelin (Javelin operator is aiming), but at the same time it fires AT4 rockets and reveals the team. Firing AT4 as soon as possible would make sense if the team were spotted and fired at. But when the team is well concealed, it's just a pointless suicide.

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@nikolai,

Yeah, I figured out the stripping away of the assault team leaves the remaining team with the AT4s and the Javs.

There are a few things seeming to be going on here. Like I hinted, I've tested this for years, and I thought it had been resolved. I'll go back behind the closed Beta doors and work on it there.

The AT4 shows a range of 0 to 300 meters (point target) and the Javelin's is 75 to 2,500 meters. Their ranges overlap from 75m to 300m. This is the problem area. (Inside of 75m, only the AT4 should be usable...and used.) The desired behavior would be for NO AT4s to be used outside ~75m, if a Javelin is present in the team/squad. Fudging that ~75m up to ~100m would be fine to me (so it's not such a hard cutoff). So, enemy armor (IFV or MBT) inside ~100m, use the AT4s and anything else (absent a restrictive cover arc). Outside that ~100m, with a Javelin, no one should fire until AFTER the Javelin(s) engages the targets.

^^^

That is what _I_ would like to see. I'm not sure if it's possible to code it that way. But, as I said, I'm ducking behind the Beta curtain.

Thanks.

Ken

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37 minutes ago, nikolai said:

Thanks @c3k. That should work fine in most cases.

Just to be clear: I am just a lowly beta tester. All I can do is flag it and run it up the pole. (To mix some metaphors. Or something. ;) )

I have NO idea if it is possible for BFC (I am -not- an employee) to do this...or if they think it's a good idea or if they have the resources, etc. 

I shared my idea and that is what I will present. But, well, we'll both have to wait and see if anything comes of it. (Of course, if it does, I may know about it before you. :) )

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Some sort of basic WRA like in Command: Modern Ops would be ideal here. Everyone has a different idea of what you should be doing with XYZ ATGM, and they're all valid depending on the scenario you face. It'd be nice to have it in the admin panel near Acquire: 'Fire guided ATGM at: >All >Tanks >APCs >Command Only', would also be useful with Snipers or units in general.

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On 8/8/2020 at 12:49 PM, Historian said:

Some sort of basic WRA like in Command: Modern Ops would be ideal here. Everyone has a different idea of what you should be doing with XYZ ATGM, and they're all valid depending on the scenario you face. It'd be nice to have it in the admin panel near Acquire: 'Fire guided ATGM at: >All >Tanks >APCs >Command Only', would also be useful with Snipers or units in general.

I agree. While I do not think that you should have explicit fine control over every aspect and element of how your men fight the battle in CM, I do wish there was a way to designate some type of general ROE like you can in C:MO. It is somewhat possible to do this now by using the target arcs (mostly to restrict fires) but it would ease some admin burden on the player if there was a WRA window like the one in C:MO.

That said, I would not hold your breath on this. It is not likely to be a feature anytime soon, if at all. It can certainly be annoying under certain circumstances, but by and large things still work the way they should, most of the time. 

As to the AT4/Javelin issue, I agree with @c3k; if there could be a tweak to the targeting logic to prevent the AT4 from being used on targets farther than 75m away, that would go a long way to alleviating this. 

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I've been working this and what I'm seeing is actually pretty good. Yes, there IS an issue, but only in one set of circumstances.

The TacAI targeting algorithm is correctly apportioning the team's antitank assets to the correct targets. I've tried various combinations of weapons and armored targets. The TacAI is really doing some great discrimination. Kudos.

The only issue is a matter of timing. If we could get everyone to HOLD FIRE until after the Javelin is fired, then it would be about perfect. IMHO.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Another bug about US infantry:

US infantry seems to have at least three detail-levels, in their 3D models, and the second detail level is bugged. The soldier's feet are tied together with some bad polygon or something. In other words: when you look at these soldiers from an intermediate distance their feet are like an oversized brown patch.

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  • 1 month later...
8 hours ago, THH149 said:

Interesting find and proposed fixes.

I'm thinking if CMBS is based on how real world militaries fire AT4s and Javelins, then what do their user manuals say? Maybe modelling that in game would make the game more realistic?

Best

THH

Looking at the pams would not reveal the complete answer - any plan worth its salt will have a High Payoff Target List (HPTL) which will drive the overall targeting effort and may not be consistent with what an operator might consider 'normal' targeting priorities.  Personally, contrary to the OP, I don't think 250m is an excessive range for a hand-held anti-tank weapon such as the AT-4.  I recall when being taught the 84mm Carl Gustav that 300m was about the max that you should consider for a moving target engagement and 500m for a stationary target so the 250m range in the example sits well within those parameters.  Although the "Charlie-G" is a different weapon system to the AT-4, the rule holds true for pretty much all weapons of this type as greater distance reduces the likelihood of hitting the target.

I also disagree with the view that Javelin should engage anything above 75m when the team also has AT4s.  Javelins should be sited and employed to engage at range because it allows you to knock lumps out of the enemy before they get close enough to cause you problems.  Of course it is often impossible to create those ideal conditions and Javelin, as with any weapon system in game, should be capable of being employed against any target that sits within its designed engagement envelope.

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