Units still firing with no LOF

[Cpl Steiner]

I seem to remember in the early discussions about how LOS and LOF would be handled, before the game came out even, Steve said that a unit with no LOF would not fire, even though it would spot the enemy. This was how he thought it would allow units to use vehicles and wrecks for cover without impacting too much on game speed due to having to rewrite the LOS map.

However, it seems this is not working as Steve originally intended. Units behind wrecks are in an enemy's LOS but not in the enemy's LOF - but the enemy fires at them regardless. Tanks will repeatedly hit wrecks in front of enemy vehicles with tank rounds, and infantry will repeatedly waste small arms fire on wrecks that are giving 100% cover to a target.

I think this has been brought up already but as I distinctly remember Steve saying no LOF would mean no shooting, I thought I'd raise it again.

If implemented for friend and foe alike it would also mean units sheltering behind wrecks could not fire on the enemy - which I find very gamey at the moment.

[Pandur]

well thats becouse "friendly" wrecks are blocking only "enemy" bullets. you can hide behind them and shoot right through while your guys are more or less unable to be hit by smal arms fire from the enemy.

i think thats a design decision or what it is called. but i wonder why it was designed like that in the first place.

[Battlefront.com]

The main element here is to allow vehicles to provide cover (i.e. block enemy LOF). This was a request since the CMBO beta demo days and was not possible due to computing and abstracted model limitations at the time. CMx2 offers a three quarters forward step towards addressing this problem in full, but there are some issues which remain.

LOS and LOF are inherently different. LOS has some abstraction built in while LOF has almost none (there is some related to buildings). The reason for this is that in real life the fidelity of spotting is far greater than anything a computer can handle. Mostly because in real life terrain is a lot more complex and the eyes move around so much more than any computer on this Earth could possibly simulate. In addition to this there are game reasons to not have enemy targets constantly blink on and off every second that they are/aren't spotted. Therefore, units that are spotted tend to remain spotted even if LOF is not at that very second practical. Only a significant change affects this such as the unit changing stance or moving to different terrain or a friendly spotting unit getting distracted or other things.

In short, in real life when you see a bunch of soldiers move behind a tank, you may not physically be able to see or shoot them, but you know that they are still there. To simulate this we leave the unit visible. Even a tank isn't that big of an object when you're talking about a half dozen or more men being behind it.

The friendly TacAI will keep targeting a unit behind a vehicle for two reasons:

1. It helps keep that unit pinned

2. It can potentially cause casualties (depends on circumstances, of course).

In our opinion this is realistic. Soldiers in real life tend to expend ammo when they think they can get an advantage from it. The two points above are advantages. Check through first person combat reports and you'll see things like this all over the place. Obviously over time the units doing the firing would slacken their fire if they felt they weren't achieving anything. This may be where the TacAI could use some improvement since it isn't capable of such an evaluation. Basically, it just presumes its fire is doing something and therefore should keep it up.

All of the above was written from the perspective of how the enemy's units behave in relation to friendly. As noted, it doesn't work exactly the same in reverse.

Why don't vehicles block friendly LOS/LOF? Because we get into massive TacAI problems that are directly related to limitations discussed in this friendly fire thread. Cascading problems of relocation based on temporary, unpredictable blockages is a really big problem for even a large programming team with big piles of money to burn and control over the hardware the system is used on. We're not in such a position

What we figure is that individuals would be able to pop shots off around the vehicle, just like the corner of a wall or a window in a building. In other words, it's unrealistic to presume that if a unit is behind a fairly small and well defined object that it would be 100% incapable of outgoing fire. Yet because of TacAI issues we can't reposition the soldiers and/or vehicles to get a true LOF to the target (i.e. taking into consideration the friendly vehicle doing the blocking). Therefore, we allow them to shoot "through" their own vehicles to some degree.

The overall effect is pretty close to the real world, but without months of programming and requiring everybody have the most advanced home computer available. It's a win-win for you guys as well as us. You get something you've always wanted (vehicles providing cover) and you get to play it now on a reasonably outfitted PC. For us we get to improve the fidelity and realism of CM in this particular area without massive sacrifices to other areas.

Steve

[ June 17, 2008, 08:17 AM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The friendly TacAI will keep targeting a unit behind a vehicle for two reasons:

1. It helps keep that unit pinned

2. It can potentially cause casualties

OK, point taken, although I think this applies more to infantry than to tank gunners. Tank gunners should probably reduce the number of rounds they fire at a target behind an enemy wreck to reflect the time they are taking to try to hit a bit of the target poking out from behind the wreck.

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Because of TacAI issues we can't reposition the soldiers and/or vehicles to get a true LOF to the target (i.e. taking into consideration the friendly vehicle doing the blocking). Therefore, we allow them to shoot "through" their own vehicles to some degree.

This is fine for friendly wrecks close to the shooter but for friendly wrecks miles away, this shouldn't be possible. If my US squad takes cover behind a wrecked BMP, Syrian soldiers several hundred yards away should not be able to kill my men through the wreck. This happens right now as I've just confirmed it through testing.

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The overall effect is pretty close to the real world, but without months of programming and requiring everybody have the most advanced home computer available.

Agreed if we can fix the problem of units shooting through their own wrecks when the wrecks are a long way away and are effectively sheltering enemy units. In short, all close (within a few metres) wrecks should be treated as friendly wrecks, and all far away wrecks should be treated as enemy (and therefore blocking) wrecks.

[Scipio]

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

Agreed if we can fix the problem of units shooting through their own wrecks when the wrecks are a long way away and are effectively sheltering enemy units. In short, all close (within a few metres) wrecks should be treated as friendly wrecks, and all far away wrecks should be treated as enemy (and therefore blocking) wrecks.

Why differ between 'friendly' and 'enemy' wrecks at all in terms of the LOS/LOF calculation? They are just a pile of metal. As Cpl Steiner said, the only significant question is the distance between shooter and target, in both directions.

[Battlefront.com]

Distance isn't a good thing to use. What I think should happen is that wrecks should block incoming fire (i.e. be treated like friendly wrecks) all the time in all circumstances. Vehicles that aren't wrecks should retain the behavior they currently have. That's because at close range it's not likely that a friendly unit will be able to use a live enemy vehicle for cover.

I've made the suggestion to Charles, but I don't know what he might do with it.

Steve

[handihoc]

I appreciate what you're saying, Steve, but I've had squads expend all their smallarms ammo trying (and sometimes failing) to kill a single crewman hiding under/behind a wreck. This isn't realistic.

[handihoc]

And I should add, that's not at particularly long range. I'm not sure what the precise range was in the most recent example (in the Hasrabit campaign), but it was certainly less than 100 metres.

[SlapHappy]

I understand the limitations placed on the engine as described by Steve. My question is: would a "trial by fire" technique help keep tank gunners and (maybe) even rifleman stop needlessly wasting ammo on unhit-able targets. By that I mean could the targeting unit place a certain number of shots at the target, deduce that it is an impossible targeting situation and cease fire? Or would that be just as problematic of a burden on the AI/Game engine?

[Battlefront.com]

The distance thing still isn't the way to go. The TacAI being able to figure out that after a while smacking bullets at a useless target is the issue. I don't know if that can be tweaked, but I'll ask.

Steve