Two suggested improvements to infantry fire

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[Apocal]

1 - If a unit has a fire order attached to a waypoint, the first men to reach the waypoint should face the target and begin firing immediately. They should not stand and wait until the entire squad reaches the location.

Agree.

2 - In CMx1 a mortar would hold fire if friendly infantry approached the target location. This behaviour should be implemented in CMSF so that units will hold fire if friendlies are near the target location. Note this doesn't require total path clearance (LOS), just proximity of effect on the target location. I hate seeing 40mm grenades and such hammering buildings next to which there are friendly infantry standing.

Disagree from a gameplay standpoint. Players who dispense large amounts of hate without properly controlling it should bear some consequences. More than once my well-crafted fire support plan has turned to pure **** on me because I wasn't paying attention and supporting fires wallopped my assaulting infantry.

[7thGalaxy]

I think he is refering to small arms fire, which dosn't cause friendly fire.

[hcrof]

+1 to both of those, freindly RPG's hitting the house as you enter it is not nice but sometimes you need a full fire order.

As for the first point, that should have been in the game from the start

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[Apocal]

I think he is refering to small arms fire, which dosn't cause friendly fire.

I hate seeing 40mm grenades and such hammering buildings next to which there are friendly infantry standing.

As I recall, it was 25mm and up caused friendly fire.

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[Dietrich]

2 - In CMx1 a mortar would hold fire if friendly infantry approached the target location. This behaviour should be implemented in CMSF so that units will hold fire if friendlies are near the target location. Note this doesn't require total path clearance (LOS), just proximity of effect on the target location. I hate seeing 40mm grenades and such hammering buildings next to which there are friendly infantry standing.

What if the mortar team or whoever is spotting for the mortar team does not have LOS or communication (whether direct or through multiple channels) with the friendly infantry near the target area so as to know whether friendlies might be affected by the fire?

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[Pandur]

25mm chain gun fire, 40mm grenades, small arms of all calibers including the 50 cal, 30mm grenades, rpg's, at4, grenades... all can be plastered on a location full of friendlies without causing friendly casualties

thats not totaly right i think, as far as i got it, only "splash" damage has an effect on own troops. means; 25mm HE(not AP), 40mm granades, 30mm granades, RPG´s and AT4´s(except handgranades!) DO cause "friendly fire"

small arms and .50 cal machingun DO NOT cause friendly casualties.

honestly becouse of that i never tried to enter a building wich is plastered by 25mm HE becouse i thought it to be suicide. if that really works its somewhat redicoulous.

[Secondbrooks]

It would not be suicide if you leave one or even more rooms in between you and window which 25mm or .50 cal is smacking. Of course if you don't manage to inform Bradley/styker/MG-team that your going into room which they are firing at, is suicide

CMSF tries to model this (as far as i can tell), but ofcourse in-game it works like snapping fingers. In reality crafting such supportfire plan might take a while. Might be that it still is bit risky plan, but in some situations might just the thing infantry in building needs.

[c3k]

I use the measured application of suspension of disbelief. Meaning, when my supporting troops are hosing down the location which my assaulting troops are entering, I imagine that the supporting troops are lifting their fire to avoid the assaulting troops. Perhaps aiming at far windows, other doors, etc. Anywhere BUT where the friendlies are. That works for me.

As for explosives, my understanding is exactly as stated above: immunity to friendly grenades, but susceptibility to any other wound mechanism, be it blast or fragmentation. Hence, TARGET LIGHT for locations to be assaulted, not TARGET.

Ken

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[Battlefront.com]

Friendly fire can be caused by anything other than small arms and grenades. The reason for this is simple... to realistically simulate the conditions which friendly fire happens the TacAI would have to be a lot smarter than it is now. It's enough work that we feel it's already at the point of diminishing returns. In other words, a lot of effort to do something that, probably, wouldn't likely change the outcome much. We have plenty of things to spend similar amounts of development time on which will have a rather huge impact on the game, so our resources are better spent on those things.

I agree with how c3k rationalizes it because, ultimately, that's really the issue with simulating friendly fire. In real life the individual soldier has the ability to recognize that what he is about to do may cause harm to a friendly, so regardless of higher instructions will act on that knowledge if he has it. Coding that is conceptually easy, but it requires a lot of checking and logic to know if the situation exists to stop firing (and if firing should start back up again). So when I get into situations where there is close assaults with a risk of friendly fire I use Target Light for supporting fire and lift it as soon as the enemy is engaged by the assaulting unit (saves on ammo, frees up units to do other things, etc.). Which means the overall effect is pretty realistic.

As for facing the direction of fire at a Waypoint, I'll post that as a suggestion to Charles. It makes sense, though I suspect there's some technical reason why it isn't working this way now. No way to know unless I ask

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Adam,

Check out c3k's possible bug report of Javelin fire:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=86316

The errant Javelin caused 3 friendly casualties.

Steve

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[bassplayer192837]

ive had instances where my men were shooting and bullets were bouncing off stuff and killed them it was the wierdest thing ever. but im not exactly sure what ammo was bieng used

[sfhand]

Javelins may do that, but 25mm fire and a bunch of others do not, and should! Man, even Abrams 120mm main gun won't hurt friendlies. It's just strange that I'm the only one noticing - I double checked and I'm using the correct version.

It seemed to me to justify the effort because of the multiplayer side of things. It sucks that right now players can basically plaster an area with fire as they walk their infantry though it.

I don't know... personally it bugs me that we're getting new vehicles and stuff while the core game gets left with stuff like this.

Adam, if you're interested, I can send you a v. 1.11 pbem turn in which an M1A1 fires what I assume to be an AP round through a couple of buildings, occupied by my Syrian forces, after which it hits the ground with a small blast - a blast that kills 2 US soldiers and causes 2 more to hit the dirt.

[Apocal]

Man, even Abrams 120mm main gun won't hurt friendlies.

I am 150% sure that it does.

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[stoex]

Adam, I don't know how careful your tests of this have been, but I just followed your suggestion myself and I have to tell you that in my test, my Abrams wiped out my own infantry extremely efficiently with area fire.

I'd be glad to do the same with a Brad or arty if you like, but I'm more than confident the results will be the same.

Maybe you want to go and check it out yourself? I can also send you my save game if you would like

[c3k]

Adam, I did just that. I'm 152% sure it does.

Abrams area TARGET, move my infantry into the impace zone. Red circles. Now, the blast/fragmentation effect caused far fewer casualties than I would've thought, but I did take casualties from 120 HEAT.

No casualties from machinegun fire.

Bradley 25mm autocannon firing HE-I caused NO casualties. That surprised me. I actually had my men running back and forth through the impact zone of 3 Bradleys firing their cannon. No casualties.

An oddity: I placed an Abrams, a Bradley, and a Squad like this:

A --->S->B---X

The Abrams, "A", fired at "X". Area TARGET. Several shells impacted X such that the ONLY WAY they could've gotten there was THROUGH Bradley "B". (My goal was to force a friendly fire incident on the Bradley and see if that caused casualties to the squad which was right where the impact would be.) NOTHING HAPPENED: THE ABRAMS SHELLS PASSED HARMLESSLY THROUGH THE BRADLEY.

I know small arms fire is affected by, at least, enemy vehicles. This bears more testing...

Regards,

Ken

[stoex]

Interesting, Ken...

I have occasionally got the impression in-game that my vehicles seemed to be firing *almost* through one another, but I never payed it enough attention since I only tend to worry about friendly fire in cases where I am aware it is a potentially serious issue. I always assumed that my vehicles would take care of not hitting each other...

Strange thing is, when targetting something beyond a destroyed/abandoned vehicle with clear LOS, I always find I get an astounding amount of rounds impacting the obstacle vehicle.

Will try testing this myself some.

[Battlefront.com]

Friendly fire against vehicles doesn't exist. Again, way too much TacAI programming would be needed to realistically avoid friendly fire. Just think... for a vehicle (or any unit, for that matter) to realistically avoid hitting a friendly vehicle (or any other unit) each unit would have to carefully check its LOF before letting a round loose. Not only that, but the firing vehicle would have to check a much wider area and look for any friendlies, then check their vectors and speed to see if they might perhaps intersect the LOF at the time of firing. This is a massive thing to ask of your computer, so from a simple computational standpoint it's out.

The alternative, and it's VERY easy to do, is to have units fire completely oblivious to what friendly units are doing and have any unfortunate circumstances count as hits. I suspect if we put this feature into the next patch about 20 minutes later the first person would post demanding that we fix the TacAI. The numbers of people complaining about their braindead troops killing each other in large quantities would grow to epic proportions until we "fixed" the TacAI so it only fired at clear shots to enemy units. Since that's not technically possible, we're right back to where we are now

So the best we can do is assess damage to friendlies from the impact of weapons. This is something that is easier for the player to plan around, therefore the player feels responsible for the outcome. We exempted small arms fire and grenades because the chances of friendly fire from TacAI is exceptionally (and of course unrealistically) high.

For those of you keeping track, CMx1's friendly fire system was pretty much the same and for the same reasons.

BTW, in FPS games the friendly fire thing is pretty easy to work around since there's effectively no TacAI. Instead, either the player shoots or he doesn't. So the responsibility for avoiding friendly fire casualties rests on the player, which means the Human brain is doing all the expensive calculations and not the computer.

Steve

[c3k]

I'll kick this into a new thread.... (Edited to NOT do that. Steve just posted, above, with an explanation. He and I crossposted.)

Edited to add this:

Steve, I've seen fire bounce off vehicles. Without running a test to verify, my memory tells me it was small arms ricocheting off enemy vehicles. You've given a cogent reason why that happens; LOS is NOT blocked by vehicles, but LOF MAY be. Hence, my men SEE an enemy and fire everything they have in a fruitless attempt to hit them. No problem, no gripe: your reasonings for that seem quite sound. Do you know if blocking fire can only affect friendly fire? Given the situation where "B" is a Blue squad, "T" is a Red Tank, and "R" is a Red squad;

B---T---R

B can see R, opens fire, but every round is blocked by the hunk of iron which is T. That is my understanding of the system. Am I correct?

Now, can R see B? If so, is the fire from R blocked by friendly vehicle T? Or, is this a rare case of one-way LOF? (I'm not trying to open a can of worms.... Just curious.)

Likewise, if we replace squads with tanks, would a Red Tank, "R", be able to fire through friendly Red Tank "T" to hit Blue Tank "B"?

Thanks,

Ken