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Up Yours Flyboy!! or how the Air A.I. ruined my war


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Ahem ( clears throat ).. tap tap.. is this thing on..

Well here I find myself at the 3rd installment of

the "CM" series, all great by the way. But not without some quirks, one I would like to mention

at this moment is Air a.i. I know that flyboys can

have a tendancy to drop/strafe their own units,

it still happens...

But I have to question the factor that accounts

for such a situation in the game... CMBO,CMBB and

this nice little Demo of CMAK...

It happens waaaaaayyy to many times and under ridiculus conditions...

SPOILER!!!!

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At present i'm playing the "Line Of Defense" as

allies a few turns in my plane shots a bunch of

missles at MY armor well an enemy "AA" gun is on

the far side of the map shooting at my plane...

Not Good!

Another example from CMBB is I am 2 turns into an

attack with a convoy of armor in an open clear feild and my stuka drops a 500 pounder right in the middle of my armor... There have been many occasions in which this type of scenrio has happned. I can give situations for friendly fire,

but somtimes it's a big streeeettchhh...

Thought I'd mention it!

Good Demo by the Way!!!!

CheerZ!

editteeddded for spellin :cool:

[ November 28, 2003, 12:37 PM: Message edited by: Micheal Wittman ]

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I'm not sure what is happening, but I've played the Line of Defense scenario (my favorite) three times now from both sides and I haven't yet seen any friendly fire take place from the fighter bomber. It is the Germans that get pasted each time. Sometimes it is the German armor that gets targeted, but once it was a Company Commander and a Tank Hunter team moving along the river edge.

I guess that I am just lucky?

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I think the past 6-7 turns in a row for me in "Line of Defense" have all involved my poor US troops being strafed by that P-51H. It would be nice for it to maybe take a run at that German Flak that has been shooting at it every turn, but at least the Flak is using ammo for something other than my infantry.

I agree, the friendly fire ratio is far too high.

-Hans

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Isn't it amazing ?

What happens when a whole squadron of Typhoons fail to even scratch the paint on a PzII?

"That's realistic!" goes the Grog squad, justly pointing to the overstated effectiveness of tactical airpower in WWII.

A single Uber-Typhoon knees your armoured force in the nuts: "That's realistic" says the Grog squad, justly pointing to the evidence of friendly fire in WW2. :rolleyes:

Aaaargh! I don't care! I just, for once, just once, want my own airpower not to be such a huge pain in the hind quarters! ...Please. :mad: :D

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I've played "Line of Defense" three times. First time as the allies and the P-51 nailed me. Second time as the Germans and the P-51 nailed me.

It was about at this time I decided the P-51 had something personal against me.

Finally, the third time playing as the Germans, the P-51 nailed the Allies and I yelled

<big>"HAH! IN YOUR FACE P-51!!!</big>

Sometimes I have issues...

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I got my allied armor pasted in "Line of Defense
Me too :(

It may be annoying but it's quite realistic.
I'm not entirely convinced it is. You can quote all the statistics and the studies you want at me but I don't need a degree in astrophysics to know the sun comes up in the morning, and from a purely common sense point of view if friendly fire was as prevalent in real life as it seems to be in CM then they just wouldn't bother doing CAS missions at all, because from my experience my own air support is as dangerous to me as it is to the enemy.
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I think there is a bit of a problem. I agree that if there is a meeting engagment that there is a chance that air support could get a little spun around in figuring out who is who on the ground. But if a force is attacking or assaulting a known location and has air support you would think that the chances of the air support attacking its own troops would be very slim. For one the attacking force would all be pointing towards the objective. Even a rookie pilot would figure that he should probably not shoot at stuff that is pointed in the direction of the known objective. I am just chucking numbers out here but I would offer that air support has about a 20% chance of attacking its own troops in a meeting engagement but probably less than a 2% chance of attacking its own troops during an attack or an assault (10 times less likely). Other factors like ground conditions (dust from a column of your own tanks motoring towards a known position), type of troops (a large number of your armour attacking a postion that is not expected to offer any tanks on the defence), known postions (like "strafe and bomb the west side of the river"), etc. should all be in play but I imagine are not.

Anyhoo - just my two bits

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Actually the Air AI pretty accurately simulates the state of U.S. CAS during the N.A. campaign. In a word it sucked.

Later on though, it really is overkill. I don't know how the targeting mechanics work in the game but I think there does need to be more consideration for the INITIAL FLOT. Once you cross into indian country, however, all bets are off, even today.

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FWIW, my father's unit, which served in Tunisia and Sicily was bombed on numerous occasions by friendlies. It got to be a standing joke.

I am just chucking numbers out here but I would offer that air support has about a 20% chance of attacking its own troops in a meeting engagement but probably less than a 2% chance of attacking its own troops during an attack or an assault (10 times less likely).
Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is no such thing as a 'Meeting Engagement' in real war. At least in CM terms, of two presicely equal ( and knowing they're equal) forces colliding over a central location.
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no no, PeterX,

I am not trying to make an argument for meeting engagments the way they are portraited in CM to occur in real warfare. I am only pointing towards the CM game options. I too agree that there were probably very few "meeting engagements" in WW2 and far more attack, probes, and assaults. If you were on the side of say the Allies late in the war and came accross a determined defender by chance I would think that the first thing you would do would be to stop, pull back and call HQ for orders. Then, probably call up your arty and plaster the area into next year. But I am getting off topic... I only put those numbers out there for arguments sake within the confines of CM.

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I didn't have any issues with the P-51 in Line of Defense. SPOILERS!

It strafed the enemy's Tiger tank just fine. Missed it though and apparently flew off because I never saw it again. Pain in the arse that it missed though. I had to surround that Tiger with infantry and tanks by the bridge in order to kill it, and even then it managed to get one of my M10's.

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Originally posted by Elmar Bijlsma:

Isn't it amazing ?

What happens when a whole squadron of Typhoons fail to even scratch the paint on a PzII?

"That's realistic!" goes the Grog squad, justly pointing to the overstated effectiveness of tactical airpower in WWII.

A single Uber-Typhoon knees your armoured force in the nuts: "That's realistic" says the Grog squad, justly pointing to the evidence of friendly fire in WW2. :rolleyes:

Not I. While the risk of friendly fire is real enough when using air support, the way it is implemented in the game leaves a lot to be desired. This is ground we have been over in some detail a couple of times now and some really good suggestions (IMO) have been put forward. Now it is up to BFC to decide where they are going to take it from here.

Michael

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Originally posted by Elmar Bijlsma:

I'm sure this problem would not be nearly so galling if every now and then my troops mis-identified the P-51 and knocked it out of the sky in a hail of .50 fire.

That would just make my day.

"If it flies, it dies," became the watchword of the Allied troops in Tunisia after being bombed and shot up by both sides.

You are not alone.

Michael

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Are the Allied tanks in this scenario being targetted by the P-51 because they are all close together? Like in some kind of column? Just wondering.

I see a lot of anecdotal commentary here, but I do not see any evidence to support that anything should be changed. Maybe sending in saved gamefiles to BFC would help them to understand if there is a problem. I just have to report that I haven't seen any yet.

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Originally posted by Le Tondu:

Are the Allied tanks in this scenario being targetted by the P-51 because they are all close together? Like in some kind of column? Just wondering.

I see a lot of anecdotal commentary here, but I do not see any evidence to support that anything should be changed. Maybe sending in saved gamefiles to BFC would help them to understand if there is a problem. I just have to report that I haven't seen any problem when I've played the scenario.

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Slightly to the left Le Tondu smile.gif

I don't think there is a real benefit of supplying savegames as what happens is quite realistic. It's the rate at wich it happens. During my Allied General v CMBB campaign games airplanes featured a lot. I typically saw 40% of attacks landing on the enemy. I'll give you a picture how these battles often looked. Most batles had 10 guns (ranging from conscript to crack (85mm simulating the 152mm guns being attacked in AG) by Ju87s or Me109s mostly of green quality. 2400m away on a 3600m map 10 elite 88mm Flak prevented the enemy from auto surrendering. Anywhere between 40%-60% of all air attacks hit the German 88s. I saw a drop off when the aircraft were of Regular or better quality but never less then 1/3 off attacks went astray. Anecdotal or not, you can't tell me that's right.

That's CMBB and atleast a dozen plays of Line of Defense tells me nothing has changed.

{edited to add actual content}

[ November 28, 2003, 10:33 PM: Message edited by: Elmar Bijlsma ]

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