TacAI f*** up

[Industrializer]

In a PBEM I just had a seriously TacAI **** up, I've plotted a movement order for a T34/85 to get into position to shell a MG Pillbox and the TacAI charged the T34 head on towards the Pillbox right into the view of an overwatching 88mm Pillbox that made short process of my tank

Now really, why did the TacAI do such a dumb thing, maybe a bug in the path finding algorithm ?

OK, here is the situation in detail, on these two pics you can see my tank behind a church and the plotted short fast-move order followed by a rotate-to order.

during execution of this order the tank drove forward half a meter, hit the corner of the church, that's probably when the TacAI took over, the tank reversed a little, drove forward again around the corner, to the position I marked as the end point of the fast-move order and continued to race roughly along the line of the rotate-to order towards the MG pillbox. In the overhead view you can see the yellow-line-of-death coming from the 88mm Pillbox.

Why hasn't the TacAI stoppen once it reached my end waypoint ??

[Sergei]

I've seen similar things happen before. Usually this has to do with the vehicle coming across an obstacle, a building in this case. From the pictures it seems that while it altered the course, it also changed the last "waypoint" to be a normal move waypoint. But actually it was a "rotate to" order.

[Redwolf]

The TacAI has a bug that a rotate command at the end is sometimes turned into a move command (IIRC with the speed ofthe last real command) when the path lead through inpassable terrain.

The algorithm rewriting the path seems to change the rotate to a movement order from time to time. This is not easy to reproduce, a simple test never showed it for me.

Alternativly, in your case it could also be the TacAI behaviour that it sometimes chickens out towards the enemy.

[ November 15, 2003, 06:51 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Redwolf]

It is also interesting that the pictures in your menu (the "command center" at theb bottom of the screen) do not say that the tank is under any movement order. In your first screenshot it says "fast - open ground" but later but later is doesn't.

[ November 15, 2003, 06:51 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Industrializer]

The tank was speeding forward on fast movement until it 'sensed' the tracing line from the 88 pillbox (that's the moment the second screenshot was taken), than it stoped, trying to reverse but without luck.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

As a general rule it's usually not a good idea to use very long rotate waypoints because this appears to be the constant that triggers an abberant move or move fast order to replace the rotate order. From my experience it's better to only have short drawn rotate orders at the end of a movement order to minimise the chances of this happening again.

Regards

Jim R.

[Sergei]

This reminds me of a PBEM game I played as Romanians defending against Hungarians. On one occasion, a Zrinyi II assault gun came up onto a ridge from behind a building, then it started acting weirdly. It turned around and started reversing towards me. Well, my "French 75" was very happy. I doubt my opponent was, though, but fortunately he's not of the type that complains of little mishappenings (like half of his force been killed by a meteorite).