How many targets per turn is realistic?

[ropey]

Here are some targetting stats I would welcome some comment on. The firing unit is a reg 75mm pb. Opening range is 480m.

Turn 1, 4 changes of target: Sqd-PIAT-PIAT-HQ

T2, 4: Inf-HQ-sqd-sqd

T3, 1: Inf (part smoked)

T4, 3: sqd-PIAT-PIAT

T5, 2: Area-Inf

T6, 0:

T7, 7: HQ-sqd-sqd-HQ-sqd-sqd-HQ

T8, 3: sqd-sqd-sqd (440-460mm)

T9, 2: 2"-sqd (400-420m)

T10, 2: sqd-sqd

T11, 3: 2"-PIAT-sqd (300m)

T12, 4: HQ-PIAT-sqd-sqd

T13, 4: sqd-sqd-sqd-HQ

T14, 3: sqd-sqd-HQ

T15, 4: sqd-sqd-sqd-sqd

T16, 3: sqd-sqd-HQ

T17, 2: sqd-HQ

T18, 0:

T19, 7: Area-HQ-HQ-sqd-HQ-PIAT-HQ

Average of 3 retargets per minute or 1 every 20 secs.

I don't think the fact it is a pb makes any difference except where it might otherwise have been suppressed.

Can someone explain/clarify the following:

1, Is this amount of retargetting realistic?

2, If the contact is a generic "Infantry?" marker, how can the AI pick special units? (Or in other words, if the AI knows it is an HQ not a sqd, why does the player not?)

3, How come the AI can tell the difference between an empty 2" and a loaded one?

4, How come the AI can tell a unit's status?

(The pb stops firing at units that have expended their ammo, and/or that have a status change such as panic.) :confused:

[ 07-24-2001: Message edited by: ropey ]

[Mr. Hankey]

What are the initial conditions for this test? Terrain, time of day, etc. I'm assuming it is a test. What are you trying to find out? And what the heck is a "pb"?

[Juju]

A PB would be a pillbox, is my guess. And points three and four -if true- are interesting points indeed.

[Graaf Spee]

4. Why the AI retargets when a units status changes.

It works that way if you dont pick targets yourself. A squad that isnt firing back is no threat to the firing squad. Therefore it switches to another target. If you give the targetorders yourself then its more sticky and your squad will continue to fire at the selected target for a longer time.

/Kristian

[ropey]

Not a test - a game.

My question is not why it switches, but how it could possibly know. :confused:

[Darwin]

hmmmm, tricky stuff here. Make sure you pay attention to which targets get fired at. I've had units with a slow rate of fire retargeting the whole turn but allways returning to priority target to fire.

[ropey]

I'll check for this, but I'm pretty sure the targetting remained until the target went out of sight or another better one came along, and that the gun fired as often as it reloaded at whatever it was targetting. That is, it didn't seem to go back to a target to fire.

7 retargets in a minute? Doesn't seem right.

[Horncastle]

I personally feel that the targetting in CMBO is unrealistic in a few ways, being far too clean cut and computer like rather than being realistic.

My main gripe is the time it takes for a unit to assess the results of the engagement and then immediately switch targets.

A tank crew somehow can realise within 0.5 seconds whether its shot has hit the target, penetrated the target and then caused enough damage to knockout the target, all through the smoke and chaos of battle up to ranges of 1000meteres, and then immediately begin targeting another tank.

It has been said that it would be easy to realise that the target is knocked out as the crew would bail out. Even so it would take a number of seconds to bail out, and in CMBO crew do in fact also take a number of seconds.

This problem (albeit a minor one maybe) also applies to infantry. I have no idea how infantry squads can tell the number of casulaties in a squad or squad strength. You will rarely see all memebers of an enemy squad lined up and shooting at you, so how in the middle of a battle you could even guess how many there were is unrealistic.

Also infantry will have the amazing ability to deduce that there is in fact one man left in a squad and once he dies that threat is over. How they would know that the chap was panicing and hiding or actually dead is also a point, they will both look the same as they would not be shooting back at you.

I think an improvement would be to model the difficulties faced in warfare to actually 100% identify a kill and a slower reaction than is at present to switch from targets. At present the code just says once the target is killed, immediately switch targets, where as it should be more in depth than that. It should be once the unit has realsied the target is neutralised then it begins to change.

[Bertram]

Just 4 retargets in a turn? You ain't seen nothing yet . I had a Tiger ambush a column of Americans. He basically popped over a hil from the flank of an advancing force, consisting of a number of HT's and lots of infantry. Of course all units ran as soon as they noticed the Tiger, while blasting away with guns.

The Tiger didn't know which unit to target first. I think technically each unit got an equal basic threath value. But because they were firing, the unit that hit the Tiger got a higher value, till the next unit hit, then that got a higher value. As all units were letting loose with automatic weapons, this happened about once a second for each unit. So the red targetting line from the Tiger switched about 10 times a second to the next threath. In fact the music was suppressed, and I got a kind of stuttering sound. Needless to say the Tiger never fired a shot.

I tried to target a specific unit for the next turn, but that didn't work, the Tac AI resumed switching between targets at once. So next turn I had to retreat him. A perfect ambush, but the Tiger didn't fire a shot.

This was the most glaring example of this behaviour I have encounterd, but it happens real often.

To answer the questions.

1) No this is not realistic. Especially when the threath values are close together the unit should at least fire a shot before switching to the next.

2) If all contacts are infantry?, targets are priorized on movement, distance and whether the unit is shooting at the targetting unit (not necesairely in that order, don't know the weight of the variables). The weight of the shooting value seems to diminish over time, so that the unit that shot most recently gets most weight. With infantry dropping to cover, getting up, and running in all directions this can make for some fast priority changes.

3 and 4) This is either a case of imperfect FOW (the player also has this info also about his/her opponent. This issue has been debated before. There will be a added layer of fog in the next CM) or a consequences of the rules of engagement above (empty units will not fire, paniced units will either stop moving or run away).

Bertram

[ 07-25-2001: Message edited by: Bertram ]

[ropey]

A nightmare turn for you Bertram. You do everything right and the game screws you up...

I could understand most of these causes IF the target was clearly identified, but when a player only sees a marker, why should the AI know better and be able to pick out HQs, AT and mortar crews?

In the stats I didn't go into the fire the PB was recieving, or the cover the various units were in - they just make it worse.

I've said this elsewhere, but what is the point of detailed penetration tables and modelling of every shell, etc, etc, if more basic things aren't addressed?

[Battlefront.com]

Ropey:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I've said this elsewhere, but what is the point of detailed penetration tables and modelling of every shell, etc, etc, if more basic things aren't addressed?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Who said that we weren't going to address basic issues? In fact...

Horncastle wrote:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>A tank crew somehow can realise within 0.5 seconds whether its shot has hit the target, penetrated the target and then caused enough damage to knockout the target, all through the smoke and chaos of battle up to ranges of 1000meteres, and then immediately begin targeting another tank. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This has been addressed for CMBB. We wanted to add this functionality to CMBO, but a million other things came before it. As much as folks like to second guess our development priorities, we like to remind people that until they have created a game of this complexity they should hold back judgement

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>This problem (albeit a minor one maybe) also applies to infantry. I have no idea how infantry squads can tell the number of casulaties in a squad or squad strength.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is a core problem related to the spotting system and the fact that this is a game, not real life. It is, as you say, very hard for a friendly unit to know when it has eliminated an enemy unit. But you missed a bigger point, which is that it is very difficult for a friendly unit to even identify an enemy unit PERIOD. In real life an infantry unit can't pick out a mortar crew from the full squad surrounding it, even if they are sitting out in the open. In real life a squad might look like a platoon if spread out, or a platon like a squad if bunched up. However, since CM is a game there has to be exactly displayed units. There is really no way around this. So a certain level of abstraction is unavoidable.

However, we can reduce the chance of identifying when the enemy unit is wiped out. For our new level of Fog of War, which does not show enemy headcount, an infantry unit that is eliminated will show up as a generic spotting marker. This means you will never know, until you get in close, if the unit you were shooting at is eliminated, Hiding, or withdrawn.

As for extreme situations where the TacAI gets "confused", we must remind you that any system we create will have such problems some times. If the game had them ALL the time it would be unplayable. If it even had them often, the game would be unplayable. Since the game is not unplayable, the number and severity of such extreme targeting problems can not be all that bad. Yes, for that one individual came it could very well be, but over all... no.

Steve

[Stalin's Organ]

You don't know what info the AI has, but very possibly it's getting "Crew(?)" and "Squad(?)" messages and picking on het crews.

It gets the same info as you, so when things are fully visible it knows as much about your troops as you do about it's when you can see them fully.

[KiwiJoe]

I think the level of info you get about enemy squads is about right. This is a game and if your reduce the info given out too much it will just become frustrating and more a matter of luck than skill. At the moment, if you play well, you can get just enough info to plan skillfully and win the game. Restrict it too much and you will not know what the hells going on. This will lead to stalemates or suicide rushes with ya fingers crossed :eek: I think everybody prefers a result rather than a draw.

[ropey]

Thanks Steve. I appreciate the answer and look forward to improvements in this area. I think my point may have been misunderstood a little though. It is the difference between the AI and the player's knowledge that concerns/confuses me.

You say <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> "However, we can reduce the chance of identifying when the enemy unit is wiped out. For our new level of Fog of War, which does not show enemy headcount, an infantry unit that is eliminated will show up as a generic spotting marker. This means you will never know, until you get in close, if the unit you were shooting at is eliminated, Hiding, or withdrawn." <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's fine, it will reduce my ability to make these distinctions as a player(which wasn't my gripe), but will it also do the same for the TacAI (which was)? In the examples given the player couldn't differentiate units, but the TacAI could.

[ 07-26-2001: Message edited by: ropey ]

[Horncastle]

Cheers for the feedback BTS, I never really believed that such details as I griped about would slip your mind, and am glad to hear that you are trying to find a solution next time around. I also agree that one must remember the need to abstract many areas of the game, as it is a game and there are somethings that are unavoidable.

I personally would quite welcome a far more chaotic little affiar, where the troops were less responsive, things more confused and targetting more difficult much like the real world. However then all the little Napoleans that we be, would be complaining why our complex pincer/attritionist flank masterplans dont work, much like they wouldnt in real life!

[aka_tom_w]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Ropey:

This is a core problem related to the spotting system and the fact that this is a game, not real life. It is, as you say, very hard for a friendly unit to know when it has eliminated an enemy unit. But you missed a bigger point, which is that it is very difficult for a friendly unit to even identify an enemy unit PERIOD. In real life an infantry unit can't pick out a mortar crew from the full squad surrounding it, even if they are sitting out in the open. In real life a squad might look like a platoon if spread out, or a platon like a squad if bunched up. However, since CM is a game there has to be exactly displayed units. There is really no way around this. So a certain level of abstraction is unavoidable.

However, we can reduce the chance of identifying when the enemy unit is wiped out. For our new level of Fog of War, which does not show enemy headcount, an infantry unit that is eliminated will show up as a generic spotting marker. This means you will never know, until you get in close, if the unit you were shooting at is eliminated, Hiding, or withdrawn.

As for extreme situations where the TacAI gets "confused", we must remind you that any system we create will have such problems some times. If the game had them ALL the time it would be unplayable. If it even had them often, the game would be unplayable. Since the game is not unplayable, the number and severity of such extreme targeting problems can not be all that bad. Yes, for that one individual came it could very well be, but over all... no.

Steve<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Great response!

"For our new level of Fog of War, which does not show enemy headcount, an infantry unit that is eliminated will show up as a generic spotting marker. This means you will never know, until you get in close, if the unit you were shooting at is eliminated, Hiding, or withdrawn."

PERFECT!

Thats sounds more fun and more realistic to me.

WooHOO!

-tom w