Infantry pathfinding - still a problem

[YankeeDog]

Ya, I can see how SOP could become more of a problem than a solution if done too much.

Nevertheless, it's quite often that I wish I could somehow give a unit a general idea how to behave, based on its place in the overall plan.

One Abrams might be the overwatch, tasked to shoot at any threat that appears. But another might be the bait, tasked to move forward until contact is made, and then evade and let the overwatch do the heavy hitting.

Right now, Cover Arcs do a decent job of setting SOPs of the overwatch group (though I do agree that some kind of "Cover Armor" arc would be nice; too often my long-range overwatch worry themselves with distant, already supressed enemy infantry contacts).

But I still haven't figured out how to tell a unit to scout forward, and evade/break contact once contact is made, without a lot of micromanaging. "Hunt" + "Hide" works to a degree for infantry, but sometimes has the nasty effect of stopping the infantry *exactly* where they are, even if this is horribly exposed in the open. And this combo doesn't serve the purpose at all for vehicles.

Once again, FWIW.

Cheers,

YD

[Battlefront.com]

This is the sort of thing that Commands could be changed into doing. Here's the way I look at things...

When someone says "I want this to happen" I look at the behavior and try to classify it:

1. Instructive concept

2. Intuitive concept

Usually things fall into one of the two. The example you gave, about the bait, would be something instructive. You have a specific idea of what is to happen and you want to impart that onto a unit. This is the easier one to deal with because it is more directly cause/effect.

An example of intuitive is "I put a Squad in this location and it came under a lot of fire. Instead of sticking around to fight, I would have rather it left on its own instead of me having to order it to do so". This is a lot trickier to handle because the vast number of these things that crop up is extremely daunting for us.

The second reason intuitive stuff is so difficult is that the effect the player is looking for is very often non-specific. "left on its own" could mean moving back out of LOS, it could mean running and taking its chances, it could mean moving up one floor or moving down one floor, etc. It might also be that you don't want the unit to bugger off until the other unit you're moving has had a chance to get into position, or that in one situation taking a casualty is acceptable and another it isn't. So on and so forth. Very complicated stuff because it means, basically, reading the player's mind or getting so many instructions that the feature itself becomes a problem.

As best we can we want to leave the intuitive stuff to the TacAI because we feel that there's so many different possibilities that no one, or even collection of, UI options will do much better. At least in practical terms.

For the instructive concepts, we first look to what the game currently does and then how we may leverage it without breaking whatever else that feature does.

I'm currently working out howe we can do some things differently for the WW2 game in terms of behaviors associated with Commands and/or the TacAI's response to them. Nothing to report as of yet since it's still in the mushy concept phase

Steve

[Scipio]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

...

But it doesn't need to be something this obtrusive. Why not do something like highlight the "action square" a final waypoint is in, not unlike the way setup zones and terrain objectives are currently highlighted? This would effectively tell the player, "With waypoint here, team will deploy over this terrain."

So a final waypoint would be a white circle, sitting in a little 8m x 8m subtlely "painted box" on the ground.

...

You could use a similar logic for Area Fire; when you select a point on the ground to Area Fire, the Action Spot could be highlighted in red. This would give the player an idea of how the Area Fire will be distributed.

Cheers,

YD

I think it is a very good idea to highlight the whole target tile, or tiles in case of unsplitted squads with more then one team, and it would be very good for area fire orders, too. Even if it's good for nothing but letting the player know in which area(s) of 8x8m his squad will likely end up. Just to make sure, I speak about UI feedback, not additonal control of the teams within the squad. It would also show better which area will roughly be covered by are fire

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

... The problem of squads splitting into teams which take individual, potentially non-optimal paths to the objective can perhaps be overcome by letting the second and third team follow the path of the first team with a time delay (like the assault order). ...

Best regards,

Thomm

I believe this would be a good solution, at least it's a good ground to start from. The cause for the problem I described in my first post seems to be that two teams can't share the same tile. A slightly delayed movement of the teams could help here. I think the solution wouldn't even be unrealistic: the first team within the squad 'scouts' the path, the others follow. I could be wrong with this, but isn't this or something similiar common pratice?

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The only time a Waypoint is ignored, that I can think of, is when a vehicle is moving too fast.

Steve

I have seen this for infantry when I tested movement in a zick-zack trench, too. Waypoint A was switched to waypoint B before the whole squad reached it, and by the way, some soldiers left the trench at this point to take the direct way.

Of course this could be a misinterpretation of me - I assume the squad had reached the waypoint tile, so the wayoint was reached in program terms and the next waypoint was switched on.

[Dirtweasle]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

This thread motivated me to make some quick tests.

Conclusion:

Individual teams perform more or less flawlessly in MOUT settings. That is a great foundation.

As soon as whole squads are moved, the likelihood of moves going terribly wrong increases to an extent that is alarming (see first post in this thread, I was able to create a similar situation without even trying to).

I hope that changes will be made to the current logic. The fact that teams perform so well makes me confident that the same can be achieved for squads.

The problem of squads splitting into teams which take individual, potentially non-optimal paths to the objective can perhaps be overcome by letting the second and third team follow the path of the first team with a time delay (like the assault order).

The problem of squads splitting up into teams at waypoints, thereby occupying more than one action spot, is another source of trouble in MOUT. What to do about this is a difficult question. Personally, I would keep them packed into one action spot, but I can see the problems with that. Assuming that the squad is ordered to move along a covered road, perhaps following teams should be allowed to use only action spots that were touched by the first team.

A last point for improvement would be the treatment of building edges and the ends of walls. I do not see behavior specific for this entities yet, such as peeking around corners, or wall ends. This would be another point that could lead to more realistic behavior. If you think about it, the corners of buildings are the most important entities regarding fighting in a built-up area, because the provide both cover and concealment. They sure deserve special treatment, akin to the special treatment that doors received, e.g.

Best regards,

Thomm

Outstanding work there, confirms and documents exactly what is driving me nuts.

[Battlefront.com]

Scipio,

I have seen this for infantry when I tested movement in a zick-zack trench, too. Waypoint A was switched to waypoint B before the whole squad reached it, and by the way, some soldiers left the trench at this point to take the direct way.

Of course this could be a misinterpretation of me - I assume the squad had reached the waypoint tile, so the wayoint was reached in program terms and the next waypoint was switched on.

Hmmm... I'm going to guess that this was a Squad and what happened was Team A reached the Waypoint and that meant that Team B started for the next Waypoint instead of going over near Team A's Action Spot. That's just a guess though!

Steve

[Thomm]

My current hypothesis is that the key to better pathfinding is in the Assault order. One thing that I am quite sure of is that the Assault order does not have the uncontrollable spreading out behavior at the final waypoint. I was able to put a whole 9 men squad next to a small building (try this with a different movement type!)

I was able to achieve the same result by splitting the squad into three teams and then moving them one after the other (thereby obviously emulating the behavior that I suggested above).

Clearly, I need to do more testing, but my present hypothesis is that the Assault command, adapted to other movement types by reducing the delay between the teams' jump-off times, may be a proper way of overcoming some of the most common issues.

Until then, possible work-arounds appear to be the Assault order and splitting squads before giving the desired waypoint.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Thomm]

Update: I am getting really excited about this! Obviously the Assault order puts the whole squad reliably into the same action spot!

It is really precise!

Have to test now whether the bunching up in one action spot is a big problem in offensive action. I guess not, though, for it is certainly better than wandering into enemy LOF!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Thomm]

Me happy:

Best regards,

Thomm

[Battlefront.com]

In general, bunching up is a bad idea. Very early in the game's history we had Squads occupying a single Action Spot, just like Teams. This was not a good thing from a gameplay standpoint, nor from a realism standpoint, so we got the Squads to spread out. The call was for 2-3 men max per Action Spot, but that was not only impractical to implement BUT it was also a really bad idea in MOUT. Yes, moving across open desert it would have been nice, but pretty much every other circumstance it would have been very bad.

Steve

[Thomm]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

In general, bunching up is a bad idea. Very early in the game's history we had Squads occupying a single Action Spot, just like Teams. This was not a good thing from a gameplay standpoint, nor from a realism standpoint, so we got the Squads to spread out. The call was for 2-3 men max per Action Spot, but that was not only impractical to implement BUT it was also a really bad idea in MOUT. Yes, moving across open desert it would have been nice, but pretty much every other circumstance it would have been very bad.

Steve,

Not sure what you are trying to say here. :confused:

The way I read it you first state that bunching up is bad, then you write that spreading out is bad!?

Best regards,

Thomm

[Battlefront.com]

Concentrated moves are useful when assaulting buildings and other confined spaces where it is important to get as many men into a small space as possible in the shortest amount of time. But for most terrain, urban or otherwise, this is not a good thing to do.

Bunching up offers the enemy a much better chance of causing casualties. Which is why units in real life don't like to bunch up unless there is a very specific reason to do so. Assaulting a building is one of those exceptions. Otherwise, a fair amount of space between men is desirable and what a unit tries to do.

The game reflects this reality pretty well. However, in very sparse terrain soldiers spread out a LOT more than they do in CMx2. This is not because we think spreading out is bad from a realism standpoint, rather it's bad for the system requirements. I made mention of these things on the prior page. Look for my post directly above Yankee Dog's first post for that page.

Bottom line...

Bunching up guys, by default, is a very bad idea. We know because that's the way the game used to be It's not surprising either since it turned out bad for the same reasons it turns out bad in real life. However, there are practical limitations as to how spread out a unit can be. Therefore, units are already sometimes too bunched up. Because of that we have equations that reduce the effects of incoming fire to balance out the slight soldier density problem. The system for that has been discussed before (fairly recently too).

Steve

[Thomm]

I understand everything you write, Steve.

Nonetheless, I would like to see a command like Assault, putting my squad into one single action spot, while, at the same time, maintaining the speed of Quick.

Once more: assault behaves like the command I dream of in tight urban situations, but is too slow for quick, yet precise movement.

I realize that this is not enough to create a new command or somesuch, but point out that the solutions to some of the mentioned problems are already implemented "under the hood" and perhaps just need to be plugged together in the right way!

Perhaps different behavior in "open" versus "urban" terrain could be a solution??!?

Best regards,

Thomm

[Battlefront.com]

Definitely having things under the hood is the way to go. I'm already giving this quite a bit of thought. The main problem with your specific suggestion is as I mentioned on the 2nd page of this thread... the game has no way of understanding the concept of "open" or "urban" because it is context sensitive. A highway with buildings on either side is urban, a highway in a desert is open. To the game it's highway... nothing more, nothing less. Therefore, it has no way to know if it should move the unit in "urban mode" vs. "open mode". Yet that is exactly what would make this sort of thing you suggest work easily

Steve