Chad Harrison Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 It has happened to all of us. You are advancing your troops across the wide open spaces of the battlefield. Everything goes well until you get within about 20 or so meters of the treeline. A distant MG opens up and the HQ and one squad from your platoon push through the MG fire and make it to the woods. So it is known that the woods are not the threat of fire, but it is some distant fire that has caused no casulties. However, you two green squads get pinned down and stop moving. Then the pinned status graduates to Panic. What do they do everytime? "I know men! Since we are scared, lets crawl back to the treeline that we left (its only a mere 200 meters!) instead of crawing towards the rest of our platoon in the trees! There is much more cover in this nice open field!" Yes the men are demoralized, but who in their right mind would try to withdrawl BACK 200 meters instead of crawling forward 20 meters? Even if fire was coming from the woods up front, I would argue that most soldiers would rather be risk moving 20 meters forward, rather than running 200 meters back? Has this ever been brought up or discussed? It was the same in CMBO, and for some reason I was hoping that it would be different in CMBB. Chad [ October 31, 2002, 11:02 PM: Message edited by: Chad Harrison ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BulletRat Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 Maybe you should try running across a field with an MG blasting away at you and then rethink the situation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Harrison Posted November 1, 2002 Author Share Posted November 1, 2002 Originally posted by BulletRat: Maybe you should try running across a field with an MG blasting away at you and then rethink the situation? I do every day. I live on campus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Harrison Posted November 1, 2002 Author Share Posted November 1, 2002 Originally posted by Pillar: When a pinned squad goes to "panic", he should be at that point getting up and running, despite the horrendous losses he will take, for the nearest cover.Exactly. I can see that this can go both ways though. But, it just makes more sense to me that they would seek the nearest cover. Not where they came from; especially when that is a couple hundred meters away. Chad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Col Deadmarsh Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 I think Steve said something to the effect that it was a problem with your infantry not having a memory of where they came from or something to that effect. It would seem to me that it should be a simple case of having the infantry go towards the nearest cover, as long as the threat doesn't occupy that space. Why can't this be coded as so? Help me understand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvio Manuel Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 Yeah it's pretty silly. Once they panic, they head for the friendly map edge; breaking LOS & heading forwards for cover bedamned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 Originally posted by Chad Harrison: Has this ever been brought up or discussed?Endlessly. How did you manage to miss the hundred or so threads in the last month that have at least mentioned this topic? Well, anyway, you're right that there is a problem. I personally suspect that it isn't one that can be satisfactorally resolved with the current game engine. Silvio observed that they run toward a friendly map edge. That was probably adjudged the lesser of several evils. Hopefully some time in the future we will see better behavior. For now, my best advice is to be very, very careful how you advance your troops. Use smoke and suppresion wherever you don't have masking terrain. Concentrate as much of your attacking force as possible against one part of the enemy line at a time so that you have a large firepower superiority. Then use movement in bounds, some of your men dashing short distances while most of your troops provide covering fire. That's how it worked in the real war. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Bull Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 Just thought I would weigh in here on this topic. I had a most bizzare TacAI behaviour occur to me. I had an inf plt and a HMG in some pines about 70m from a stream. I was attacking towards the EAST, the stream ran NORTH-SOUTH. There was a small patch of pines adjacent to and on my side of the stream. I ordered the plt + HMG to move EAST across the 70m of open ground which separated them from the pines at the streams edge. The HMG was the slowest and by the time the group came under enemy MG fire from about 270m on the other side of the stream (from the EAST), the HMG had not even advanced more than 1/3 of the way. The HMG unit immediately hit the dirt and started SNEAKING back WEST towards the safety of the pines it had just left. Nothing wrong so far. It was in a PINNED status and crawling back to the pines. All the other units made it to the cover of the pines near the stream so the HMG unit was now separated from the plt and the plt HQ unit. Playing PBEM, I can see that the HMG has automatically mapped a path back WEST towards the pines it just left, probably a mere 20m away. I just hoped that it wouldn't panic and rout next turn as apart form the HQ that it was now detached from, there was no other HQ in the area to rally it. I hit GO and hoped for the best. I watch the movie and the HMG unit is still recieving MG fire from some woods on the EASTERN side of the stream. It gets to about 5m of the safety of the pines it had decided to return to then panics and breaks. Well this is where it goes strange. It doesn't rout towards the pines that are just 5m away, it decides to rout and crawl back EAST across the 70m of open ground to where the inf plt were!! Now this to me, is almost the converse of what Chad orignally posted. This unit originally had TacAI initiated orders to RETREAT (sneaking in a pinned state) back towards cover (~20m) in the direction of its own lines, but when it paniced and routed the TacAI made it head in the direction of the enemy lines towards cover ~70m away, despite being ~5m away from cover that would have put it FURTHER away from enemy fire and enemy lines. The only enemy units spotted (apart from the units firing at the HMG) were on the other side of the stream beyond and well to the EAST. Looking at the situation, I almost felt that it routed in the exact direction of where the nearest HQ was. The HMG eventually did make it (crawling) all the way (~70m) to the pines near the stream where the HQ unit was. Of course, it was totally exhausted and broken. Anyone else seen something like this before? Lt Bull [ November 01, 2002, 12:49 AM: Message edited by: Lt Bull ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 Originally posted by Lt Bull: Anyone else seen something like this before?Ho boy! I believe the Italians have a folk dance called the Tarantella. Yeah, this one's been with us since the early BO days. I've seen it a hundred times at least. If a unit is in a broken state (using that term to denote any condition in which it will no longer accept orders from the player) it will reverse whatever course it is on if it takes additional fire. This usually leads to quite preposterous behavior as units vacillate, going first one way and then another until they are finally cut down. I'm almost convinced that it's still in the game because Charles takes secret and perverse delight in it. Michael [ November 01, 2002, 04:02 AM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Harrison Posted November 1, 2002 Author Share Posted November 1, 2002 Originally posted by Michael emrys: Endlessly. How did you manage to miss the hundred or so threads in the last month that have at least mentioned this topic?I always seem to miss the fun threads somehow! Well, anyway, you're right that there is a problem. I personally suspect that it isn't one that can be satisfactorally resolved with the current game engine. Silvio observed that they run toward a friendly map edge. That was probably adjudged the lesser of several evils. Hopefully some time in the future we will see better behavior.I think that the easiest solution is just to have them move towards the nearest cover, as long as its relatively safe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 Originally posted by Chad Harrison: I think that the easiest solution is just to have them move towards the nearest cover, as long as its relatively safe.That's what everybody would like to see. I can't guess exactly why it isn't done that way, but I suppose there is a reason somewhere. It can be said that knowing what constitutes "nearest cover that is relatively safe" is one of those discriminations that the human brain finds easy because we all (well, those of us who have pondered this particular issue) have a history of trials and errors to draw on to guide our selections. Trying to duplicate such a history in a computer program turns out to be a non-trivial task. On the other hand (don't you just love it when somebody says that? you were hoping this was going to be short, weren't you? heh heh), a fairly simple check list might suffice. 1. What is the nearest terrain that will provide better cover and/or break the LOS from currently incoming fire? 2. Is it presently occupied by known enemy units? Was it previously occupied by known enemy units that might still be there? 3. Would moving toward it expose me to yet more fire? And so forth. This list is intended to be representative rather than exhaustive. I submit that by running down such a list of priorities, a unit might have a fair chance of making a good choice most of the time. I think, as was suggested earlier in another thread, heavy weight should be given to a unit just staying in place and hugging the ground unless it is taking casualties. Michael [ November 01, 2002, 04:23 AM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Rock Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 Michael, I think 1) and 2) on your list would be sufficient. Calculating point 3) would be troublesome. Firstly trying to determine exposure to fire is actually quite complex. * One location in the woods 20m away might be locations/data points does the engine have to calculate on? * What about the route the unit takes - do you need to calculate the amount of fire the unit might take along the whole path? More CPU cycles. * Also, to do it properly you should only take into account the units the panicking unit is aware of, but then what about units that that are in the area but temporarily out of position? It's starting to chew up a lot of cycles just to determine what should be calculated. Secondly the game engine doesn't seem to consider the risk of being fired on when moving to terrain now, why complicate things? :cool: [ November 01, 2002, 05:47 AM: Message edited by: Brian Rock ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elmo Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 Chad Your units are not acting in a dumb manner. They are just heading toward the last known source of toilet paper which they desperately need. Elmo [ November 01, 2002, 06:24 AM: Message edited by: Elmo ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted November 1, 2002 Share Posted November 1, 2002 Originally posted by Brian Rock: Calculating point 3) would be troublesome.You're right of course. I just threw that into the mix in case I woke up in an ideal world in the morning. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Harrison Posted November 1, 2002 Author Share Posted November 1, 2002 Originally posted by Elmo: Chad Your units are not acting in a dumb manner. They are just heading toward the last known source of toilet paper which they desperately need. ElmoBut by 1942, wasnt that issued to the Russians? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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