Arrghh. Gameplay frustrations

[c3k]

Gents,

Point taken regarding the utility of teams. What constitutes "tight" terrain?

In the case I've presented, the terrain prior to that turn was tighter. Yet, pathing and unit cohesion worked fine. My squads entered all the buildings I wanted them to enter, through the entrance I commanded. (I hunt up to the door, then hunt into the building.) In the turn I posted about, all that flew out the window.

The terrain was MORE open (less tighter?).

The squad was supposed to exit their building, over a low wall, into an open ground zone, then hunt to the door, then into the building. It all went well until they got to the door. That's when team 2 and 3 split off on their own.

Why did it (not following the pathing) occur only in the turn which resulted in casualties? Why did it occur in a turn with open terrain? Why did it occur AFTER successfully exiting a building and crossing a wall? Why did it occur only with 2 teams and not all 3? Why did all 3 suffer the attack effects?

In the timeline I posted upstream the time gap between the BMP being identified and the BMP opening fire was 7 seconds. That is too long for a unit not to take appropriate action. (I maintain that clustering within the LOF was inappropriate.)

I agree that v1.07 is a huge improvement. Heck, I'm actually playing this game now. I'm sure BF.C is committed to improving the game. I don't want to workaround flaws. I'd like to help get them polished.

Thanks,

Ken

[YankeeDog]

Oh, don't take my comments the wrong way, Ken; I think this is an interesting discussion that hopefully is developing some interesting information about how the game can be tweaked and improved. Hopefully, BFC will give it a read at some point (if they haven't already). I suspect they're all rather busy with trying to get 1.08 out the door ATM.

I simply suggest the split-squad workaround as a way of getting a more enjoyable game experience for now, until the full squad pathing gets better. (though I do think there are tactical reasons why splitting squads in urban terrain is usually a good idea; this is a different discussion, though. Whether sending the whole squad forward at once as you did was the best tactical choice or not, the squad behavior you describe shouldn't have happened)

As for your specific questions about why this thing happened in this specific situation, I really can't say. However, I do know enough about programming to understand that pathfinding routines are notoriously difficult to program. If the code isn't just right, very small differences in input can lead to large, and often undesirable changes in output. I assume that's what's going on here, and the model just needs to be tweaked and refined more.

Cheers,

YD

[c3k]

YD,

Thanks. I appreciate the feedback and helpful hints for better play.

I have another savegame showing odd behavior. This is in Al Amarah. The basics are an elevated road sheltering my men. I used SLOW to approach the crest. (I did this after HUNT left my men frozen in position and not hitting the dirt.)

Anyhow, case in point, my 3 man sniper team crested the rise. The 2 men in front saw and fired upon the enemy...who returned fire. The result, eventually, was 1 KIA, 1 WIA. (There were other units involved.) The oddity was the sniper (the man with the M110): he never tried to get a shot. He stayed BEHIND the hill.

This behavior occurs with other units. It is linked to the behavior of the unit I started this topic about. That unit had 2/3's under fire and the other 1/3 in a totally protected location, yet both groups' morale suffered simultaneously.

In this latest case the sniper pinned. His morale suffered. Yet, he was protected while his buddies were taking fire.

This behavior, a unit split in different locations (close or far), has different LOS and LOF, yet, the in-cover group will PIN simultaneously with the exposed group.

Regards,

Ken

[YankeeDog]

Well, as for the 1 remaining guy of the sniper team being "pinned", that doesn't bother me.

If I had just seen the two people I work with most closely at my job get shot just a few feet away from me, I'd probably be "pinned" for a little while, too, regardless of whether I was actually in the line of fire at the time. That's gotta be a pretty traumatic experience, even if you are a trained soldier. So the fact the the sniper cowered behind the crest for a while is realistic, IMHO.

But I'm also a bit perplexed as to how best to approach a crest to get LOS to what's on the other side. . . as you note, Hunt doesn't always work, because even a very distant contact, or a dead/disabled enemy contact in view will make the hunting unit stop right where it is.

Move/Quick/Slow & adding a "Hide" command to the final waypoint works to keep units from shooting once they've stopped, just like it did in CMx1. But the problem is that units will also sometimes shoot while they're moving.

Overall, I'm still having a hard time when I want to do sneaky, stealthy movement in CMSF. This especially makes it difficult to use units like like snipers, who are much more effective when their location is unknown to the enemy.

IMHO, if a unit has a "Hide" order attached to its final waypoint, it should not shoot at all while moving, unless it's shot at first.

I'll post if I figure anything out. We need some more how-to basics threads for CMSF.

Cheers,

YD

[jomni]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

[QB] I agree with JSB. Less waypoints is generally better. Lots of waypoints plotted together seems to confuse the pathfinding AI.

Is that so? I haven't played a lot these days and I always thought that more waypoints is better... based on the early iterations of the game.

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by jomni:

Is that so? I haven't played a lot these days and I always thought that more waypoints is better... based on the early iterations of the game.

Well, I can't speak to earlier versions of the game as I only started playing with 1.07.

But in general, with 1.07, I have found the AI's ability to find a reasonable route from point A to B pretty good, even over long distances. It generally sticks to the better cover and low ground.

Where I've seen the most problems is when I've given the AI a bunch of short waypoints -- point A to point B to point C to point D, with each waypoint only about 20m from the last one, or something like that. Sometimes this works, but sometimes it seems to screw with the TacAI's pathfinding and formation ability, leading to unusual (and often undesirable) results.

As I've suggested before, it's less of an issue in Realtime, where you can always just issue orders one waypoint at a time, and issue the new order as soon as a unit has completed the last one. It can be a problem in WEGO, though, where sometimes you need to string orders together to make sure a unit isn't left hanging out in the open somewhere, because of where the "orders breaks" are falling in the action.

Cheers,

YD

[JSB]

Pathfinding is now reliable for most situations! (nothing to do with CMx1)

Waypoints in CMSF mean that the squad must regroup before going to the next step. A squad covers 100m in the open in about 50 seconds (quick order); for the same distance divided in 5 sections, it takes almost 1mn30...

[c3k]

YD; in my sniper team example I did not give enough detail. The team did not take any casualties while receiving incoming fire for 2 or 3 minutes. During that time the sniper stayed below the crest, suppressed and moving towards pinned. Finally the other two were hit.

Pathing and tactical formations: right now it seems that the squads advance in a "blob". If they move to a building, they form up against it. That is good behavior. Rounding the corner of a building is done single file. I like that as well. It's a "follow me" behavior. (It could be tweaked; one man or more stays at the corner providing cover while one man at a time hustles out, finding cover on the other side of the open space for the rest of the men.)

However, the "blob squad" stays a blob in non-building terrain. If I HUNT up to the top of the raised road in Al Amarah, the front 1-3 men of the blob freeze the entire squad. How do I get the rest of the men up? I want all 9 men, all 9 pairs of eyes, all 9 weapons up on the line. I can't do that right now.

Suggestions?

The TacAI does nicely getting men in trenches and along buildings. Inside buildings is looking well done also. Hmmm, I'll even add balconies: my men have formed a conga line on balconies (I wanted max firepower. When the RPG hit them I got max casualties. Sorry men; my fault.)

How do low walls and men interact? Do the soldiers form up along them?

It seems that using terrain folds where cover is based on LOS is at issue.

An infantry "crest" command (hull down) would be nice...(I understand that could be VERY difficult to code.)

Perhaps a design workaround would be to have walls (if men form along them) or trenches alongside the raised road if the designer foresees that terrain as being used?

[YankeeDog]

Ah, yes. That's different that what I at first imagined.

I agree that the AI isn't handling terrain crests very well right now. In my experience, the AI does a good job with some kinds of linear cover, like low walls and trenches -- the AI will usually line up the squad members so to get full benefit of the wall/trench, and get most of the squad into a good firing position.

But this same formation routine doesn't work so well for fighting crests. As you note, you often either get (a) everyone but 1 or 2 soldiers in full defilade, unable to fire, or ( several members positioned over the top of the crest, where they're sitting ducks.

Ultimately, the solution is to get the AI to treat crests more like it treats low walls. In the meantime, the low wall/trench workaround you suggest might help.

And yeah, they need to do something about balconies. Soldiers love to stand on them, but they're death. Either the cover level should be improved, or soldiers should stay off them. As it is now, if you put a squad onto a floor with balconies, it's very hard to keep the men from running out onto the balconies and getting themselves killed.

One thing that does help sometimes: The "Face" command will make a squad re-organize itself, and sometimes you can nudge the soldiers into better firing positions using this command.

Cheers,

YD