Why won't my infantry and tanks stay still, even with Hold Position orders?

[Wildwolf45]

This has been an increasing frustration of mine.

Infantry in the open will stay where they are when ordered to do so. When I put them in a trench though, they will constantly move forwards in the trench, get bunched up in groups, and then when a shell lands on them, BAM!, half the squad is gone. If I order a squad into a trench, even when ordering each individual soldier, they always, without failing so far, move towards the action and bunch up.

This is despite the fact that as soon as they hit the trench, I pause the game and issue prone, hold fire, and hold position orders. Then what do I see? Instead of staying down and spread out, they bunch up and keep standing up for a look around. I actually lost 3 troops to an HMG in the Wacht am Rhine mission because they would not keep their heads down!

Tanks. Why do they constantly feel the need to rotate towards enemy they cannot see but other units can? I issue hold position orders, but they are always spinning. I tell them to rotate to a certain position and then re-order them to hold it and almost as soon as I finish the order, there they are, spinning round to face an enemy they can't see. This ABSOLUTELY ruins ambushes, especicially with hull-mounted guns.

Please tell me this will be fixed in a patch!

[Freeboy]

Odd, I use the bottum hold button and they stay put, are you usingthe top "stop" button?

One thing that has caused them to err would be tryingto aim at a spot and the cursor missing and the engine think I gave a move order.. but hours and hours multiplied without this grief..

Good luck..

[tom3d]

Im usually move my troops with a "defend" command

and the soldiers stay still after the order.

[FinnN]

I have the same issue with trenches - they stay in the trench but tend to bunch up in the firing positions or in the ends (even if there are free firing positions for them to spread between).

About the standing up when prone/crouching in a trench, I think the AI has the same problem too, as when one of my snipers takes out an enemy in a trench it seems to be when they're standing up to take a peek.

Have fun

Finn

[Wildwolf45]

Originally posted by Freeboy:

Odd, I use the bottum hold button and they stay put, are you usingthe top "stop" button?

I am DEFINITELY using the hold position order. The tanks can be on the other side a hill, with absolutely no way to shoot at the thing they are rotating to face, and still spin about anyways.

The infantry do stand still in the open, but seem to ignore that in the trenches.

[Bad]

yes, even with hold command tanks rotate to enemy, very annoying when you make trap for enemy tanks and your tannks rotate to enemy inf, even with hold fire on

[Freeboy]

maybe a bug??? I do not see this happening, even when I engage at an angle to the hull, my "hold" orders seem to keep the tanks stoppedd dead.. good luck

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by Freeboy:

maybe a bug??? I do not see this happening, even when I engage at an angle to the hull, my "hold" orders seem to keep the tanks stoppedd dead.. good luck

It's not a bug, as it's a common occurence in my games as well. If you have enemy coming from multiple directions, your tanks aren't as prone to this behavior, but if only 1 or 2 enemy icons appear - even out of LOS - your tanks nearly always turn towards them. I'm sure it's happening to you too, Freeboy, look closely the next time you have only 1 enemy icon showing somewhere on the map.

IIRC one solution is to also order your tanks to hold fire to prevent them from constantly spinning to face the enemy.

[PFMM]

A usefull tip, you can target obscured icons. Right click on an obscured target and it will be tracked by the unit.

[strategygamer]

I suppose its probably a symptom of the individual unit AI trying to keep your soldiers alive. Regardless of that though, I'm not sure of any situation where you wouldn't want your tank to turn and face the most immediate target. The strongest armor is on the front side...

[thewood]

Originally posted by strategygamer:

I suppose its probably a symptom of the individual unit AI trying to keep your soldiers alive. Regardless of that though, I'm not sure of any situation where you wouldn't want your tank to turn and face the most immediate target. The strongest armor is on the front side...

I think the point you missed is that they are turning towards an infantry target when you are trying to keep them facing an armor threat you know is coming down a road. It has not been a frequent occurence for me, but I think it has happened a few times. With no replay feature, I am missing it in real scenarios, but I suspect its happening from the results.

[Wildwolf45]

Originally posted by strategygamer:

I suppose its probably a symptom of the individual unit AI trying to keep your soldiers alive. Regardless of that though, I'm not sure of any situation where you wouldn't want your tank to turn and face the most immediate target. The strongest armor is on the front side...

The problem is that they are not facing a threat, they are turning and looking at the blank side of a hill. Meanwhile, on the road to their left, an enemy tank is just about to roll into view, and my carefully place Jagtiger has to spin about to shoot it, and thus usually wastes its first shot (as the gunner rarely waits for the tank to stop moving before firing).

[Gunslingr3]

This issue is definitely my biggest problem with the game.

At this point I feel like it's more the computer playing the game against itself and I occassionally interfere on one side.

I routinely have to babysit units that I've told to hold position and hold fire. Last night I tried the beginning German scenario again. I moved my platoon of Czech 35s and 38s to a small ridge on the right hand side of the map, remaining on the reverse slope to wait for infantry to come up and scout.

I positioned my four infantry squads across the map - one of the left wing, one in the center, two on the right (spread out like this honestly to make it easire to avoid God's artillery). As I'm waiting for the squads on the right to reach the tree line by the road behind the tanks I hear a machine gun going off. I spin the view and see that my center squad that should be hiding in the bushes prone, holding fire and position, have decided to proceed with a lone head on assault of the enemy trenches. I give them orders to move back to their original position, and lose three men. Suddenly I hear tank guns. I swing the view back, one of the tanks has decided he's going to crest the ridge, go down the other side, and start trying to engage whatever he can. The multitude of AT guns open up on his dumb ass and he loses a track and his main gun while I'm trying to back him behind the ridge. I suspect he lost his track because when I gave him the order to retreat and clicked to make a green arrow directly behind him and on the reverse slope he elected to rotate 180' and present his rear armor to the AT guns. I stopped him twice (about 20'-30' into the rotation), rotated back, and gave a new retreat order. Sometimes this works, and the tank backs up, but I've seen the behaviour I described at least 1/3 of the time. Instead of 'retreat' can we maybe have a 'reverse'? It would really cut down on the side shots my tanks keep asking for.

Anyway, I have to stop focusing on him for a moment because now the other tanks are firing up and trying to cross the hill in contradiction to orders. I manage to get them stopped and hear machine guns cranking up again. Not the center!

I look and instead it's the left wing that is led by John Rambo. They've decided without armor, or even a squad to provide covering fire, that they're going to find out what all the fuss is about. Babysitting this squad back into position I hear tank fire again. Dammit!

This guy I manage to catch before he entirely crests the hill, but I realize it's now my duty to constantly pause the game and re-issue hold orders to everyone.

This is killing the enjoyment of the game.

I would like to make a small suggestion. In the Take Command Civil War games each unit had a button that let you 'Take Command' of the unit, which disabled most of the friendly tactical AI routines that are bedeviling me in this game. They would turn to face a threat that was firing on them, but they wouldn't go wondering off without your knowledge getting slaughtered and unravelling the best laid plans of hamstertruppen and men.

I like this game, it has loads of promise, but I hope this idea can be taken into consideration and perhaps in some way implemented, because I find fighting my own troops more difficult than the enemy.

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by PFMM:

A usefull tip, you can target obscured icons. Right click on an obscured target and it will be tracked by the unit.

I do this alot during my games. Unfotunately if I have one of my units target an enemy icon that my unit can't see yet, there is the tendency for my unit to leave its position and move toward the targeted icon in an attempt to get a shot.

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by Gunslingr3:

I would like to make a small suggestion. In the Take Command Civil War games each unit had a button that let you 'Take Command' of the unit, which disabled most of the friendly tactical AI routines that are bedeviling me in this game.

Excellent games. My bro actually did all the scenarios and scenario scripting for the second game of the series.

I like this game, it has loads of promise, but I hope this idea can be taken into consideration and perhaps in some way implemented, because I find fighting my own troops more difficult than the enemy.[/qb]

Agreed. There is brilliance at work in this design. But there is also several truely horrible blunders in this design.

The roots of an excellent game are here. Hopefully the rough edges can be smoothed out.

[ May 18, 2007, 04:54 PM: Message edited by: Jeff Duquette ]

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by Jeff Duquette:

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

A usefull tip, you can target obscured icons. Right click on an obscured target and it will be tracked by the unit.

I do this alot during my games. Unfotunately if I have one of my units target an enemy icon that my unit can't see yet, there is the tendency for my unit to leave its position and move toward the targeted icon in an attempt to get a shot. </font>

[thewood]

Is there some kind of time limit on the hold order? It seems that if I leave them on hold and go something else, whan I come back later, some have wandered away from the squad.

[Gunslingr3]

Is there some kind of time limit on the hold order? It seems that if I leave them on hold and go something else, whan I come back later, some have wandered away from the squad.

I've seen infantry 'turn off' the hold fire and hold position commands in less than a minute.

Bug or feature?

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by Mannheim Tanker:

Order them to hold position and they will stay put. [/QB]

OK...that seems to work. I think the movement I was seeing is spin. I know this has been disscussed already on this forum. If there are threats in the near vicinity my vehicles will turn or neutral steer to face the new threat. I was just looking at this. Unfortunately tanks in HOLD will neutral steer toward an infantry target or even a retreating crew. While I understand the intent of the AI in doing this spin thing, it sometimes puts a tank in a compromised position when a real threat suddenly appears -- like another tank. I could see this sort of thing being used as a goofy tactic to expose a tanks flank or rear during multiplayer games. That is assuming I can ever hook up for a multiplayer game

[Werner_U292]

I agree with most of these replies. I too have a problem with my stupid hull mounted arty turning every which way until finally taking a round to their already pitiful side armor and blowing up. Except mine do it with little or no reasoning, even though they cant see the unit (but others can) they will constantly turn towards it exposing their vital sides to others that ARE in sight. Horrrrrrrific AI.

However, as one stated above, I also find it most effective to turn a tank towards an enemy, apply the "dont move" order and than engage them. This usually keeps them pointed at the right enemy. The downside to this is I find myself constantly pausing and unpausing the game to try and reconfigure my tanks just right everytime an enemy gets knocked out. In the later missions this can become frustrating considering the amount of enemies that usually find themselves appearing all over the map and usually turns a 30 minute scenario into hours of micromanaging.

Oh yeah, why dont we get the option to take control of individual tanks and troops? This could be done easily enough, even with a simple A W S D configurment.

[kryger]

It can be almost impossible to keep your infantry to stay still.

Even with hold position and hold fire, they move around.

I believe it is a bug.

[Wildwolf45]

Originally posted by kryger:

It can be almost impossible to keep your infantry to stay still.

Even with hold position and hold fire, they move around.

I believe it is a bug.

I've found that left in the open and given the hold position order, they will tend to stay still.

However, and this can be KILLER in setting up infantry ambushes, it does not stop them from standing up for a look around. This then alerts the AI that there is some inf there, and bam!, ambush is no more.

[Prankster]

I also feel you pain on this issue, Issue the HOLD cammand and move away from the action, only to come back to the trench and see your troops OUT OF THE TRENCH, and dead???

I also have a major issue of troops and armour wandering too close to enemy trenches when the "attack" option is selected. If you select attack to a Sherman to fire at a emeny panzerschek, they rotate, fire and then proceed to drive towards the bloody guy until his 75 mm is touching him... then proceeding to get blown up!

I've even had troops rotating captured field guns on their own accord... when I know a threat is coming from another direction. These troops can't follow orders... :mad:

I also think the HOLD command, should continue until clicked off.

[ May 22, 2007, 06:06 AM: Message edited by: Prankster ]

[Flatline]

I also have a problem with tanks and such not "holding" as they should.

It seems like issuing a hold order stops the unit as it should. It then remains stopped until a new enemy tank is sighted (generally by some other unit). The held unit then "cancels" its hold and often advances to the new contact.

I have had tanks one one side of the battlefield up and decide to cross to the other side to attack some tanks.

Something needs to be setup to allow a "stay here till I tell you otherwise" order. I was hoping defend would do the trick but no luck...

[Pandur]

iam playing with the demo since 2 or 3 days and thats also one of my biggest problems. in the seelöwe mission i put a pather withhin view of the bridge, facing it. to its right is the a little hill and the canal behind it. so it cant be see from eneywhere but the tanks wich go over the bridge.

as everyone here, i also used the hold hold position command but to no effect. the tank was constantly turning toward this hill becouse there are enemys behind. leaving its side to the tanks wich drive over the bridge...

the unability to reverse if there are enemys in sight is allready said to be adressed in patch...so i dont say more about it.

and the last problem i have in mind wiht tracked vehicles is the rotate command. why does a tank stop to track/engage a target when it has to rotate in that game!?

when i rush out between two houses or something like that and turn turret to the side to attack, i cant issue a rotate command becouse it abandoms the fireing command. this leads to side shots...verry frustating.

quote:

Originally posted by Jeff Duquette:

quote:

Originally posted by PFMM:

A usefull tip, you can target obscured icons. Right click on an obscured target and it will be tracked by the unit.

I do this alot during my games. Unfotunately if I have one of my units target an enemy icon that my unit can't see yet, there is the tendency for my unit to leave its position and move toward the targeted icon in an attempt to get a shot.

i find when i do this it takes much much more time for the gunner to let off a shot than if you reissue the fireing command.

say you issue the command to track a tank so yur tank doesnt turn around asap.

the tank comes in LOS(icon gets red), but noone fires on the tank at my battles. i allwasy pause there and reissue the command as soon as the unit marker of the enemy vehicle got red.