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Premature AI Surrenders


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This is an issue that cropped up on another thread but rather than confuse the discussion there I thought I'd start a new one.

Whilst playing my way through the campaigns I have repeatedly found that the AI surrenders when it still has the capacity to inflict serious damage on my forces, usually with infantry forces and AT assets that I have yet to spot.

On a couple of occasions the, apparently premature, surrender has given me a total victory when, due to time constraints, there would have been no way I could have achieved the objectives set down in the briefing.

Can anyone who has more experience with the game explain what is going on and why the AI thows its hand in so easily?

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This is an issue that cropped up on another thread but rather than confuse the discussion there I thought I'd start a new one.

Whilst playing my way through the campaigns I have repeatedly found that the AI surrenders when it still has the capacity to inflict serious damage on my forces, usually with infantry forces and AT assets that I have yet to spot.

On a couple of occasions the, apparently premature, surrender has given me a total victory when, due to time constraints, there would have been no way I could have achieved the objectives set down in the briefing.

Can anyone who has more experience with the game explain what is going on and why the AI thows its hand in so easily?

I noticed that this was a major issue in CMSF... but not in the British module.

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I don't think anyone outside BFC knows where the surrender threshold is set. However, one thing that plays a large role is the training and morale level of the Syrian side. The higher, the better. In fact, I've designed a couple of missions that featured a Crack/Extreme Special Forces company and it was almost impossible to 'break' those guys. They would almost fight to the last man. But of course the majority of scenarios will feature forces that are Green-Conscript with Poor or Low morale and they're not so steadfast.

Every unit that RED loses contributes something towards that hidden threshold. One thing to bear in mind is that destroying the enemy's vehicles will force a surrender faster than killing his infantry. Vehicles contribute a higher award towards the surrender threshold than do infantry units. MBTs contribute by far the most while Trucks contribute little more than an infantry unit. So if you eliminate all those T-62s and BMP-1s, ta Reserve or Regular enemy formation will probably give up quite quickly afterwards.

I have repeatedly found that the AI surrenders when it still has the capacity to inflict serious damage on my forces, usually with infantry forces and AT assets that I have yet to spot.

Yeah, both Hitler and Stalin complained about their own forces doing his a wee bit. ;)

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Ah, good point! In the game scenarios veteran-or-better is usually reserved for Red Special Forces or Republican Guards, reflecting the relative lack of training given to reserves and militias. So your 'typical' Syrian force may already be thinking about surrendering (and survivng) before the battle starts! The exception would be Fighters and Combatants who can be as green as grass but fanatical in the extreme. They won't hit anything they aim at but they'll die like a man.

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Ah, good point! In the game scenarios veteran-or-better is usually reserved for Red Special Forces or Republican Guards, reflecting the relative lack of training given to reserves and militias. So your 'typical' Syrian force may already be thinking about surrendering (and survivng) before the battle starts! The exception would be Fighters and Combatants who can be as green as grass but fanatical in the extreme. They won't hit anything they aim at but they'll die like a man.

Or, in "It Ain't Half Hot Mum", some of the green troops will hold their positions like beserkers, and are apparently immune to just about everything.

One particularly troublesome command squad in a building 2nd floor was the lucky recipient of one helictopter run, sustained HMG fire from 2 HMGs, the intermittent support of a GMG, and two squads of infantry at relatively close range. Since this was failing to cause even a single casualty or get them to leave the building, eventually a tornado came in and dropped a bomb on the building, reducing the whole thing to rubble.

Whereupon the squad somehow survived and continued to fight from the ruins.

Do Syrian squads sometimes turn fanatical like squads could in CMBB?

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No, but some times Chuck's Syrian cousin, Abdul Norris shows up. Buildings don't fall on Abdul, he just pushes them down when the walls get in the way of his AK fire.

I think it's just when the mission maker turns the motivation way up, but I don't know how they survive so much... maybe all the sane opposition surrenders or runs before it get's to collapsing buildings? Or the squad is so motivated that a 500lb bomb "tis but a flesh wound!". You only need one arm to spray with an AK... maybe "fanatical" means high as a kite on injected adrenalin? THAT causes so crazy combat situations, insurgents high on stuff like that have been known to shrug off several center mass hits or a lost limb like it was nothing. It would explain some of that pathfinding too...

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Or, in "It Ain't Half Hot Mum", some of the green troops will hold their positions like beserkers, and are apparently immune to just about everything.

As the author of that particular slugfest, I can tell you that the best morale any RED troops have is Normal. Best training is Green. There are quite a few Conscripts with Low morale there too. The thing is they don't have any vehicles so it's harder to get a surrender. I have to confess that I'm a bit puzzled at how resilient they prove under fire, not only in that mission but in the new ones I'm working on. But I'm not complaining, I like it better this way as they feel more realistic when I play them.

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about "it aint half hot mum" scenario;

my general rule of thumb is if the same type of enemy apears to be better then the same ones i faced under different conditions, its not the enemys fault but my or the conditions fault :D

either i am doing something wrong or my force just dont cut it, as the force i used "the last time" i whiped out the same guys.

point is this is what we see in "it aint half hot mum", dont get me wrong i like the scenario so dont read this in a negative way but thing is the best armor you have is none at all. and the enemy got roughly as many 12.7mm MG´s as you have vehicles, and ATGM´s and i think a SPG9 too, not sure bout that, and the terrain doesnt help you either there.

imagine the scenario without them, would be whole different thing, or TF Thunder mission 1 with the force you have in the scenario, will break youre neck :P

i think its a good showcase that a fully equiped syrian green infantry formations with mostly all they got, can at least partly stop a bunch of brits in jeeps, for some time :D

but thats about it.

premature surrender;

i think this is a problem, we heared a lot of reasons for red to surrender now in this thread but this does not explain why they surrender "that" early.

i see it comming in my current mission, i am in this mission befor the "counterattack" thingy. the one with the highway making a hook going past a SF HQ.

i am about to have killed all there is, every tank apearing in the rear, all the inf there is on the way to the SF HQ.

now i guess out of the about 40 SF guys in the HQ i will shoot a hand full, supress the rest a little and they surrender.

this is a joke and kills off the fun a little on a regular basis, mostly in all missions i play.

i thinks this could be tweaked back to where it was befor it was changed in a patch, or at least set somewhere in the middle, but right now it a little overdone, this is no good in my view.

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