Advance of the Living Dead

[Childress]

I did a hotseat test (1.07, file available) to verify if units had absolutely no sense of self-preservation or this was a figment of my imagination. I concealed a Syrian BMP-2 angled behind a building as two US squads, 13 men, approached on the highway. The vehicle opened fire at ~40 meters, killing a grunt. The US troops kept crawling forward methodically until the last man was a glowing red dot on the road. The whole thing seemed zombie-like. The TacAI needs to acquire Bug Out skills, imo.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Paper Tiger]

This is probably a spotting related issue. Each soldier gets killed when he enters the LoS of the BMP-2, naturally. Since nobody else can 'see' the threat, they just keep coming on, albeit, very cautiously. Try your experiment again when they have some cover available and you might get a different result.

[Roter Stern]

The day Charles writes an AI capable of doing all the things we want it to do is the day SkyNet will take over

[Battlefront.com]

There is a bug-out feature, but in extreme situations the damage is done before it can kick in effectively. Without having seen Childress' setup I'd have to guess that it's probably one of those situations where the unit is pretty much f'd no matter what it does, so the TacAI basically can't compensate no matter what it does. In real life sometimes it just doesn't matter, it's not going to do squat.

Steve

[Flanker15]

Try the situation again with a line of buildings down one side and see if the troops go into them when fired on?

[Childress]

Originally posted by Adam1:

BMP-2 opens fire at 13 men on highway at 40m... any result that has them all dead within 10 seconds or so is fine.

Not sure I agree. If it were a question of sweeping machine gun fire, maybe. They just kept snaking forward in a line, consuming about 45 seconds of time. (Sorry, forgot how to post a screenshot- been a while)

[Zwolo2003]

Originally posted by Paper Tiger:

This is probably a spotting related issue. Each soldier gets killed when he enters the LoS of the BMP-2, naturally. Since nobody else can 'see' the threat, they just keep coming on, albeit, very cautiously.

Very probably. It would be better if the soldiers could react when they spot their colleagues being hit not only the firing enemy. Or if they can hear shots fired close (i.e. the first guy turns the corner, there is a burst of gunfire or explosion, the second guy stays put).

I think generally the sound spotting should happen more often in the game and trigger more reactions. Now it seems substantially less than CMx1

Zwolo

[Darkmath]

While agree sound spotting would be welcomed to improve the unit's reaction, I don't think too that it has to do with a deficient AI in comparison with CMX1 :

+In CMX1, 10 men in a squad are considered as a single unit. Then it's easier to model a correct behaviour model for this critical situation since if one man is suppressed, the whole squad instantly reacts the same way.

CMX1 hasn't have to model interactions between every soldiers, which CMSF have to do because 1:1 representation.

+I don't recall TACAI in CMX1 reacts better in such a situation. If I put a move or run command from one building to the another side of the street, the whole 10 men squad under a german AA gunfire would continue crawling to the waypoint (aka crawl of death), or just staying at the middle of street until "broken" status is reached then flee and get slaughtered. The results between abstracted engine and 1:1 representation is the same :the whole squad get slaughtered, maybe faster in CMX1 because all the soldiers move to the waypoint at the same time.

+If CMSF handle badly this situation just like CMX1, then it could be a command issue.

Which move do you order to the squad?

Movement like quick or Run will get the same result as in CMX1 anyway : run to the waypoint ASAP ignoring enemy fire.

Both CMSF and CMX1 have a same "move to contact" ("hunt"in CMSF) order which prevents from the suicidal dash behaviour above.

If you haven't used "Hunt", I suppose CMSF would handle better the situation than move to contact in CMX1 ; once a single men is on the street and got hit, the rest of the squad stay at the corner, while in CMX1 if a man is on the middle street then spotted the enemy , the rest of the squad is located at the same point. It's then too late.

+There is still is something that CMSF hasn't which CMX1 have : sound spotting, or at least the UI does not give sound spotting information in CMSF.

This could help the squad reacting faster.

[Childress]

Originally posted by Darkmath:

the whole 10 men squad under a german AA gunfire would continue crawling to the waypoint (aka crawl of death), or just staying at the middle of street until "broken" status is reached then flee and get slaughtered.

Problem is, units in CMSF don't seem to arrive at that "broken" status, a condition my squads should certainly have entered 15 seconds into the turn. There may be a programming challenge here; how do you scatter a 1:1 represented squad and still preserve its structural unity as a playing piece in the game?

[benpark]

The "!" symbol represents units broken beyond rally or surrendering. This may work for some cases. In others, it would be best to have some retreat logic for the the little geezers.

The player can attempt to exert some semblance of this, but that seems like too much micromanagement, and when playing against the AI it would only strengthen the game play to have a better retreat system.

For infantry, something like a reverse "Assault" (some troops covering the enemy with suppressive fire the retreat of the rest of the friendly squad) would be nice for trained troops. Less trained might just bug out en mass using the most covered route directly away from enemy fire. If these two systems fail as well as their morale, and the enemy is "x" distance away- "!" ensues.

[Splinty]

Originally posted by benpark:

The "!" symbol represents units broken beyond rally or surrendering. This may work for some cases. In others, it would be best to have some retreat logic for the the little geezers.

The player can attempt to exert some semblance of this, but that seems like too much micromanagement, and when playing against the AI it would only strengthen the game play to have a better retreat system.

For infantry, something like a reverse "Assault" (some troops covering the enemy with suppressive fire the retreat of the rest of the friendly squad) would be nice for trained troops. Less trained might just bug out en mass using the most covered route directly away from enemy fire. If these two systems fail as well as their morale, and the enemy is "x" distance away- "!" ensues.

I totally agree. A "disengage" or "break contact" command would be an excellent intermediate step in the Oh S#$%!!! process.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Splinty:

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

The "!" symbol represents units broken beyond rally or surrendering. This may work for some cases. In others, it would be best to have some retreat logic for the the little geezers.

The player can attempt to exert some semblance of this, but that seems like too much micromanagement, and when playing against the AI it would only strengthen the game play to have a better retreat system.

For infantry, something like a reverse "Assault" (some troops covering the enemy with suppressive fire the retreat of the rest of the friendly squad) would be nice for trained troops. Less trained might just bug out en mass using the most covered route directly away from enemy fire. If these two systems fail as well as their morale, and the enemy is "x" distance away- "!" ensues.

I totally agree. A "disengage" or "break contact" command would be an excellent intermediate step in the Oh S#$%!!! process. </font>

[Childress]

Very probably. It would be better if the soldiers could react when they spot their colleagues being hit not only the firing enemy. Or if they can hear shots fired close (i.e. the first guy turns the corner, there is a burst of gunfire or explosion, the second guy stays put).

Zwolo

Yeah, I'd go for that. The truly creepy part of my test was that the men were picked off one by one yet kept crawling forward gurgling "Brains, BRAINS!".

[the Fighting Seabee]

That sounds kinda like the situation when you have a whole squad of heroes who all jump on the grenade.

[Childress]

Originally posted by the Fighting Seabee:

That sounds kinda like the situation when you have a whole squad of heroes who all jump on the grenade.

Hehe. You mean like in this flick?

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0088286/