Tank movement ad libs

[Lmandrake]

I must be a masochist, as I usually play as the Americans. Playing on the U.S. side means carefully moving your tanks so they are only exposed at the right place and time.

I have, however, lost many tanks when I lay out a route and the tank, presumably because the path I chose for it is unsuitable or impassable, decides to take a waltzing route to the selected endpoint. Of course, when this waltz takes the tank out of cover when the route I chose was safe, I get to watch it burn...

This usually happens when I try to snake through clear paths in and around trees or in towns. What I don't understand is why this happens when I lay the route in what the program tells me is open terrain? Is there any way for me to tell when this will happen? Is it a matter of the path being too narrow? :confused:

[Dunnee]

You might be laying your path too close to the obstacles. I don't know if this is accurate, but I think CM takes into account the width and length of a vehicle. So I make sure I have enough room to manouover(is that how you spell it?) around the obstacles.

[nedlam]

When I move troops and tanks through areas on the map that are "questionable" I move the waypoint around to make sure that the unit can move through. Usually this works best when I'm trying to move it through paths in wooded areas, swamps, etc. It even tells you what terrain the waypoint is on not to mention the color of the line will tell you if it can cross the path or not. Small distances between waypoints helps out oo.

Nedlam

[JMcGuire]

I see this sometimes when I end up running a tank along the edge of a sharp change in altitude (not necessarily sharp enough to warrant the impassable steep slope rating).

I'm guessing this is a variation of more than 1 unit of altitude but I haven't ever gone back to the maps to check. My guess is from just looking at the places it happens. Sometimes they're hard to discern in the in-game view but I tend to give steep inclines a wider berth now.

Looks like another thread where I'll cast my patented vote requesting a fourth AI for Combat Mission: the Tank Driver AI...

[FriendlyFire]

This is easy to explain. When you're about to plot a waypoint, the color of the line only tells you whether your tank can be IN that waypoint, not whether it can GET there. If you're not sure of the terrain in between, then take a little more time when plotting each waypoint: move the mouse along the line that you want to move along, and see if the movement line turns red at any point along it. If it does, then you need to rethink your movement, and add one or more intermediate waypoints, to zig-zag up the slope or to skirt around that bit of woods. There's no magic here. The path-finding AI only kicks in if your tank is in between waypoints and suddenly finds impassable terrain - which means that you didn't check the path out beforehand.