Leonidas Posted March 10, 2001 Share Posted March 10, 2001 The tank reaction to AT guns baffles me. I call it 'gun hypnosis.' When faced with a weapon whose sole purpose is destroying tanks, the CM tank TacAI usually sits still and fires at the AT gun until one of them is destroyed. And it's usually the tank. This behavior doesn't seem to depend on whether the tank has any chance of destroying the gun. Right now in a PBEM I've got a Puma (with HE blast values in the single digits) firing at an American AT gun several hundred meters away. The Puma's job is killing AFVs. We have artillery to handle AT guns. But somehow my Puma commander didn't get that memo. The irony is that AFVs, and especially British and American tanks, are so eager to throw smoke and run away from enemy AFVs, even if it's a tank killer running away from a tank. The cover story is usually that the tank crew is afraid. Yet when faced with a weapon that they are not equipped to fight, the tank crew suddenly becomes fearless and stands its ground. I'm not asking for a patch, and CM is a great game despite this problem. But I would like to see this fixed in CM2. The ideal solution IMHO would involve detailed orders and SOPs. But if that isn't in the cards, BTS should at least tweak the tank TacAI so that tanks are generally braver against other tanks than they are against AT guns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mannheim Tanker Posted March 10, 2001 Share Posted March 10, 2001 Yeah, I've noticed this trance-like state as well. One thought: often times the tank just sits there without even returning fire. Perhaps it just can't spot the location of the gun, and therefore doesn't know which way to retreat. In this case, it seems realistic to hesitate...it certainly is annoying, however, when they trade shots with a know AT position. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Michael emrys Posted March 10, 2001 Share Posted March 10, 2001 Apparently this is not simply a problem with CM as the Soviets, for instance, expected to kill on average 2-3 tanks with their AT guns before those were in turn dispatched. But I agree that it would be nice if some of the more egregious AI behavior could be revisited and improved. (But then...that will always be true no matter how good it gets.) Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Mahone Posted March 10, 2001 Share Posted March 10, 2001 Well, I've noticed these things and have gotten aggravated as well. On the other hand, with a game as versatile as Combat Mission this could really portray reality. Here is a real life account from the gunner of a Sherman tank when facing almost the same situation as above. -------------------------------------------- This account is excerpted from "They were all young kids," by Aaron Elson. The late Corporal Jim Rothschadl of Waubun, Minn., was the gunner in Lieutenant and Tank Commander Jim Flowers' tank in the battle for Hill 122. Rothschadl and Flowers were both badly wounded and burned, and spent two days in no man's land waiting to be rescued. ©2000, Aaron Elson And then when that first big shell hit the tank, it hit the right front, I think it hit the sprocket, and we stopped. When it hit, the tank went up. It lifted the front end way up, and it came on down. The motor was still running. It was an 88. I’m sure it was an 88. It was a big shell; the 88 has a high velocity. Flowers was looking for it, that 88. And he was telling me to move from the middle to the right. And I was trying to. I quit firing the .30 then, we had already been hit. And I remember Gary, Horace Gary, he was the driver, he started swearing down there, "Godammit, let’s get out of this sonofabitch! We’re sitting ducks! Let’s get the hell out of here!" And Flowers told me to traverse to the right a little bit. He was poking me in the back. He was standing right behind me – I was sitting in the gunner’s seat – and he was saying something about over to the right, and I was trying to pick out something but I couldn’t, through the periscope. I did see a heat wave, where the blast was from. And I fired one round in there. All of this took place in a matter of seconds from the time the first one hit. I think Gary was pretty angry that we didn’t get out earlier. The tank wasn’t on fire yet, and Gary and Kiballa were making all this noise, they were arguing. Then the second shell hit. And that came through the turret; that’s what knocked Jim’s foot off. I didn’t know it at the time. There was this goddamn humongous explosion, and racket, and heat. The turret was open. It immediately caught fire. And the shell went right on through. It had to have been an armor-piercing shell. If it had been high-explosive, I wouldn’t be sitting here. It had to be an armor-piercing, and it went right on through. Those German 88s could hit the front of a tank and that shell would come right out the back end. They had double the velocity of our 75s. Double. ------------------------------------------- Well there we have it. A real life situation that would look like the "trance" Mannheim Tanker spoke about if it where to happen in the game. I will agree that a Puma standing up to such a threat like Leonidas spoke about is a bit different. Maybe lighter AFV should be tweaked to back down more often. On the darker side, AI tweaking could get so picky it could have a negative affect...... Oh well, take it easy fellas, and sorry about the length! -Head ------------------ "I don't need my junkie friends all knockin' at my door. I just wanna do an old time waltz with a buxom Irish whore!" -Shane MacGowan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisl Posted March 10, 2001 Share Posted March 10, 2001 Except in the case here it sounds like they were immobilized with the first shot-- "hit the sprocket" and "let's get out of the tank, we're sittin ducks" ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
von Lucke Posted March 10, 2001 Share Posted March 10, 2001 Sounds more like they were immobilized in arguing about what to do... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongLeftFlank Posted March 10, 2001 Share Posted March 10, 2001 Yeah, and reversing a tank out of a bad situation can't be all that easy to do, especially while BU. You're peering through a letterbox the wrong way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clubfoot Posted March 10, 2001 Share Posted March 10, 2001 And although it's not modelled in CM, reversing hastily out of an assault often meant rolling backwards over the infantry you were supporting. Clubfoot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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