Auto-sneak-exhaustion not improved in 1.01

[LightningWar]

I have seen this also. I had a MG42 covering my troops advance last night in a QB. They had a hull down like position in some scattered trees. They got spooked for whatever reason and tried to sneak back down the reverse slope. They kept disobeying my orders to move. Finally I just put a halt command on them and they seemed to obey that. Turned and started waxing some more Russians.

As for the snow comment. This QB I am playing is a snow map. I suggest moving everywhere until the last second then running or assaulting or advancing. Use close tank support to supress any infantry who migh ruin your day

LW

[Abbott]

Here is a small test scenario I set up. German HMG teams in the attack with Russian Maxims defending. Two independent fire lanes are setup with all regular troops defending. One set of Veteran troops and one set of regular troops attacking. It only takes about 5 minutes to run the test if some others would like to try it.

I am not seeing the same results as Redwolf. My units are accepting the move command after going to ground upon taking incoming fire.

Get the scenario here.

[Benton]

If I correctly understand the problem Redwolf is having, then I have had the same problem. In the Pop Guns and Elephant scenario, I found it nearly impossible to move troops toward the enemy. Once the troops had Moved ~45 meters out of the woods they were exhausted and trying to Sneak all the way back to the woods. During each orders phase I would tell them to to Halt, or Move back to the cover of woods. Once I hit play they would once again revert to Sneak over a long distance. Thus they remained utterly exhausted and throughout the game even though they were under such light fire from ~380 meters away that they never took casualties.

[flamingknives]

A useful little trick I use.

In the order phase after the unit switches to "sneak", I delete all movement commands and hit "hide" This frequently makes the unit drop out of sight for long enough to recover its wits.

[SuperSulo]

I also did a fire lane test, but with 5 lanes over steppe. Turn 1 I just moved the HMG's down the lanes. Turn 2 the Maxim's started shooting. Turn 3 the Maxim's stopped. 2 Panicked, 2 pinned, 1 cautious, no casualties. I changed the three changeable (the pinned's and the cautious) sneak path's to move. And so on every turn...

"Findings": As long as the unit is anything but "OK", they will toggle back to sneak at the start of the action phase. Once they reached "OK", they jumped up and started walking, even in the middle of a turn. As no new fire were incoming, they all made it back to the tree line, one were exhausted. In turn 6 (4 turns after being shot at) one HMG is still sneaking.

By turn 16 (14 turns after being shot at) the exhausted HMG returned to Rested.

Saved games for turn 2-6 is here:

http://w1.211.telia.com/~u21117402/HMG.zip

no passwords.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

A useful little trick I use.

In the order phase after the unit switches to "sneak", I delete all movement commands and hit "hide" This frequently makes the unit drop out of sight for long enough to recover its wits.

THANKS!

that is the BEST suggestion I have heard yet.

I have tried the hide order a few times when my units were tired and bordering on breaking and panicing and hide does seem to keep them idle, resting, stationary and with their heads down so they can maybe avoid panicing and routing and recover some of their composure and rest a bit.

-tom w

[Redwolf]

I don't have a definite test yet, but appears that the hide method is in fact more valid in 1.01. In 1.00 they would start sneaking to cover anyway no matter what you do, even if you give hide. In 1.01 they are supposed to like open ground a little better and that appears to make them stay in place with hide.

Still, that leaves no good hair at the issue that even after the enemy ceases fire you still dont get control back and that control is taken away too early.

[Redwolf]

I was testing Abott's scenario.

The veterans behave fine, in fact they only get out of control when taking a casualty.

For the regulars I couldn't directly observe the behaviour I complain about.

I believe that this is because the cover patches are too few and too far away at the time the units got supressed. They sometimes voluntarily stay put. The whole problem is connected to cover reasonably close by. That means cover so near that the TacAI wants to reach it but far enough that you cannot reach it before you exhaust. That opens another obvious solution: only auto-plot a sneak move to cover if the cover is near enough to reach without exhaustion.

[ November 22, 2002, 11:10 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Gaylord Focker]

Well the way i see it actualy works fine, though i'm very open to be proven wrong but first here me out on this one thing.

Ok let's pretend redwolf, steve, Seanachai and i are part of a heavy machine gun team.

Seanachai locates a nice patch of cover up ahead to drag our equipment up to and we head for it crossing some open ground.

Suddenly shots break the silence of the air and we are soon aware we are being fired upon.

Training and instinct /self preservation/common sense kick in and we all hit the ground to become smaller targets, and start crawling to a safer place.

It is stated in the manual that crawling ans sneakng fall under the same command so to me this all makes sense, but again i'm not a grog nor a professional game tester so don't take me as coming off all official and haughty.

Well i said my piece, now i have to go back to fixing some of my own probelms on my pc, hehe.

[Gaylord Focker]

I would also like to add in that when being shot at, most people would be crawling not only as flat but also as fast as they could to a safer place, this would be very tiring with no load, nevermind equipment depending on the distance.

[xerxes]

No one is seriously suggesting that moving mgs in the open when taking fire is anything but crazy, are they?

btw, hiding often works when you take fire to break the target lock. Doesn't work if the enemy is too close though.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by xerxes:

o one is seriously suggesting that moving mgs in the open when taking fire is anything but crazy, are they?

That's not the point.

The point is that minimal amount of fire makes you lose control of the MGs, and that you don't get control back when the fire stops.

A certain amount of initial fire is required to cause this. Abott's test scenario above has too much range for the Maxiums to reach this amount, a firepower of 30 or is insufficient.

Still, the amount of fire that is sufficient to fall intot he auto-sneak hole is too low, the most obvious indication that the units don' take casulties.

btw, hiding often works when you take fire to break the target lock. Doesn't work if the enemy is too close though.

I repeat, the condition even continues to apply after the enemy fire stops altogether.

In addition, the HMGs disobeyed the stop and hide commands anyway and fell back into sneak in the first second of the action phase, no matter what commands you gave. This might have improved the in the patch.

[Gaylord Focker]

If you heard the barking of a machine gun, we'rent quite sure where it was coming from, but was sure that it was firing at you, would you be thinking about the fire power red wolf, or after seeing lets say "only" 2 bullets hit the dirt next to you would you come to the conclusion it may be prudent to get your head down, and find someplace where you might not get shot in the face?

If a machine gun was firing at you, and you hit the dirt and crawl/sneak your ass off to get to a safer place, once the gun stops firing, my bet would be you would be relieved and keep crawling to a safer patch of cover knowing full well what awaits you next time you venture out into the same open spot.

To simplify the whole thing, if you touch a hot stove, chance are your not going to touch it again until you have protective gloves or something.

[ November 23, 2002, 06:49 PM: Message edited by: Gaylord Focker ]

[Redwolf]

Gaylord, you are right.

However, what I complain about is something else.

Let me try to put it into different words just again.

CM has a model of supression. When your units get too much supression, the game take control away from you. That is what you relate to the real life fact of staying down, even after the fire may cease, if I understand you correctly.

The CM model of supression and control basically goes like this: the are a number of stages of supression. "Pinned" has so-so control for the player, but everything better gives players control and everything worse takes control away from the player (panic, broken, routed).

For the heavy weapons in CMBB this is broken. Control is taken away from you for units which are cautious or pinned, and control is taken away from you even afterwards for many turns. Control is taken away from you because you can give orders (because the units is better than panic), but yours orders are overwritten, they sneak anyway, no matter what you say. And -and this is the core of my complains- control is taken away from you for many turns even after the unit becomes totally unsupressed, and that is because the unit got exhausted while it was supressed and needs a lot of turns recovering from the exhaustion, although its upression is long gone.

So, effectivly, totally independently of what threshold BFC sets for supression (or what you consider heads-down amount of fire), the game is slightly broken in that the player is punished as if he was receiving much more fire.

Lets say BFC says "firepower 80 for two turns takes away control for these turns and two thereafter". This works only for non heavy weapons. The current game mechanics will put the heavy weapons out of the game for at least 10-15 turns (first the sneakerism and then the recovery from exhaustion).

If somebody made it here with reading this stuff, please say so. I'm beginning to wonder whether I overestimate the attention span of the audience here.

[ November 23, 2002, 07:41 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Redwolf]

Where did Jason C. go, anyway?

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by redwolf:

If somebody made it here with reading this stuff, please say so. I'm beginning to wonder whether I overestimate the attention span of the audience here.

Well, Martin, I've made it this far, so I guess I must be almost as stubborn a cuss as you are.

But I'm starting to wonder...

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by redwolf:

Where did Jason C. go, anyway?

Caught in the jaws of Real Life would be my guess. He disappeared shortly after the release of BB. At first I thought he might be too deeply involved in the new game to post. But now I have long since abandoned that theory. Nobody who enjoys sounding off as much as he would stay away for just that reason. Maybe his job is keeping him too busy. Maybe he found True Love at last. Who knows?

Michael

[Gaylord Focker]

Originally posted by redwolf:

If somebody made it here with reading this stuff, please say so. I'm beginning to wonder whether I overestimate the attention span of the audience here.

All this time i assumed your posts were supposed to be long winded.....

I see your point, but let me ask you this, (this is seriously a question) how long would it take a heavy machine gun crew to catch their breath back?

I assume their equipment weight would be more then a normal squad so would crawl sprinting/sneaking make them exausted to the point where it is modeled in CMBB?

Went to the book store with my girl tonight and i picked up a book by Glantz titled The Battle for Leningrad, looks interesting, but i am not a grog yet.

I'll try seeing if i can somehow find any facts as to weight capacity, endurance ect for different heavy machine gun teams, but i have a feeling i'll come up empty on this one for the time being.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by redwolf:

[qb]If somebody made it here with reading this stuff, please say so. I'm beginning to wonder whether I overestimate the attention span of the audience here.

All this time i assumed your posts were supposed to be long winded.....

I see your point, but let me ask you this, (this is seriously a question) how long would it take a heavy machine gun crew to catch their breath back?

</font>

[Gaylord Focker]

Ok i finaly get what you meant, hehe.

Ok so the effects of taking fire are multiplied by 4 when dealing with hmg teams over platoons of infantry, here in lies my question, could this be due to training?

I mean did hmg squads get the same training as infantry squads? I realy have no idea, but i am assuming that infantry platoons would be much more acustomed i guess to taking fire, then less manuverable bigger/slower target hmg squads in the open?

Like i said earlier i'm no grog by any means, but was'nt the hmg's basic point to set up in a hiddenish spot and fire away and avoid being seen and located if possible? Also to surpress other units from firing at them and their friends? If the HMG squad is the one being fired upon instead of dishing it out, would this effect the crew in a more negative way?

I have no idea, this probably sounds ridiculous but either way there needs ot be facts to prove one thing right or the other, so we may as well get some theories out of the way in the mean time to make life eaiser later right? I don't know it's late and i'm going to be, lol.

[aka_tom_w]

I have not lost interest in this one

just busy with Real Life lately

-tom w

[SuperSulo]

Since redwolf has me on ignore or something, could someone ask him to check out my test? I got one HMG to sneak into Exhausted after a limited amount of firepower.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by SuperSulo:

Since redwolf has me on ignore or something, could someone ask him to check out my test? I got one HMG to sneak into Exhausted after a limited amount of firepower.

Oh. Talk about too short attention span :-/

Here are the screenshots.

This is the beginning situation, the German HMGs move and the Maxiums open fire. Note the firepower rating.

%%

Here is the result. Note that due to laughable firepower nobody has been injured (and sure enough no digital mammal is injured during the production of this test). Also note that the units are having "move", not "sneak" orders, but what they actually do is "sneak".

Here's the next turn:

Note that the non-pinned units actually switched to move. This test is using extremly little firepower and perfect conditions. In a seperate posting I will explain why in a realistic CMBB situation most or all HMGs will be affected.

%%

Next turn. Note that two of the three HMGs are having "move" lines but what they actually do is "sneak". The panic'ed MG recovered faster for some reason and switched to move after only getting tired. This will not happen in a an actual battle.

%%

One HMG is now, although it says "move" still "sneak"ing. It will be exhausted by the end of this turn

Mind you that the enemy fired 4 turns ago only for one turn, with non-injuring fire, at 100% morale, still the damn HMG is sneaking to exhuastion although I gave, and it recognized, but disobeyed, an order to switch from sneak to move.

The HMG will go back into "Ready" from "Tiring" in turn 16. It has been shot on in turn 1, for one turn, with fire which injured nobody.

[ November 24, 2002, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Redwolf]

So why does this test show one HMG in disarray and not all and why do I say this will be worse in an actual battle?

- extremly long range and hence low firepower rating and only a single turn of firing

- short way to cover

- 100% morale

- it is cool on dry ground. Heat, cold, mud or snow will emphasize the problem

If you try this stunt in actual CMBB battle situations, then you have more stuff happening and more exhausting conditions which will ensure that everybody ends up like the poor bastards now still sneaking to their long-term exhaustion.

Why do I think this is unrealistic?

You have to understand what I find unrealistic: I don't find it unrealistic that they go into supression under fire (even if it is this little amount of fire). That's OK, I don't care.

What I think is a game mistake is that control is taken away for so long. Please, take control away for the firing turns and shortly thereafter. But what is actually happening right now is that the minimal amount of fire from the defender put the HMG out of action for 15 turns.

Is 15 turns out-of-action a proper punishment for getting your HMG shot at with firepower 17 for one turn?

[ November 24, 2002, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[aka_tom_w]

that is an interesting test

thanks for posting the pics and the test results, Redwolf

I hope Steve and Charles and Matt are looking at this issue.

It would appear it does indeed deserve some attention and maybe a coding tweak in v1.02 (maybe?)

-tom w