A bit of Ai frustration

[gunnergoz]

I got a chubby watching the Panther video, I have to man up to it...

[SlapHappy]

What is with that DynamicPara guy? He seems to be waging a one-man war against the existence of the Stryker. I've seen dozens of his videos.

[Vanir Ausf B]

More grog porn. A Jagdpanther does a complete 180° turn in about 12 seconds.

BTW, do all the tanks in the game use the same engine sound. That Maybach V12 sounds about 10x louder and a lot meaner than it does in the game. Would be cool if a mod were possible.

[ParaBellum]

BTW that Tiger is giving me a real headache in that game...

After I somehow managed to un-entangle him from various trees and houses I just wanted him to move towards the enemy. Preferably with his gun and frontal armour pointing towards suspected bad guys.

Issued a hunt command to both the Tiger and the StuG:

Both move out as intended

But then, as the Tiger reaches his new position suddenly a blue 'face to' line appears, pointing straight ahead. And the Tiger AGAIN starts to turn in place until his flank is pointing towards the enemy. Both tank and crew are OK, the Tiger has NO visual contacts to any enemy, this is starting to become really frustrating.

After this battle, if that commander somehow survives, he'll be reassigned to drive a Goliath, I swear...

[Pandur]

use a 360° cover arc, covering the whole map, to fix vehicles auto rotating to somewhere while not suffering any drawbacks from the arc. that was working well in CMSF.

[MengJiao]

In my experience, the vehicle AI has a consistent problem with continuing to rotate after it should have stopped. It only seems to happen while the vehicle is rotating in place near obstacles. I've seen a number of cases where the AI halts to make a sharp turn, starts rotating, and then instead of moving forward once it's lined up properly, just keeps turning.

Also, how long was the reverse command? The AI usually seems to cancel vehicle move orders that are only a few meters long, and replace them with a rotate order. I've had a lot of problems with tanks that stop a few meters away from bocage, then won't move forward when I try to get them right up against it. They usually replace the move with a rotate, and start turning away. I play realtime, not WEGO, so I've never had the patience to see how far it will rotate before it gives up. I've found that reversing 20 meters or so, then moving back up again works much better, since the AI won't change the orders.

This is similar to my experience. When I want to get to a spot parallel to the present one and still facing the enemy, I reverse for at least 20 meters and go back up again, just as described above. In RT at least you see instantly when the AI refuses or changes orders because of problems in getting to some of the waypoints.

[slysniper]

In my experience, the vehicle AI has a consistent problem with continuing to rotate after it should have stopped. It only seems to happen while the vehicle is rotating in place near obstacles. I've seen a number of cases where the AI halts to make a sharp turn, starts rotating, and then instead of moving forward once it's lined up properly, just keeps turning.

Also, how long was the reverse command? The AI usually seems to cancel vehicle move orders that are only a few meters long, and replace them with a rotate order. I've had a lot of problems with tanks that stop a few meters away from bocage, then won't move forward when I try to get them right up against it. They usually replace the move with a rotate, and start turning away. I play realtime, not WEGO, so I've never had the patience to see how far it will rotate before it gives up. I've found that reversing 20 meters or so, then moving back up again works much better, since the AI won't change the orders.

THESE ARE GOOD OBSERVATIONS

I had not thought about it but I would say he is correct here as to when tanks seem to have problems performing commands, I have seen the same behaver, but had not figured how to overcome it.

[ParaBellum]

use a 360° cover arc, covering the whole map, to fix vehicles auto rotating to somewhere while not suffering any drawbacks from the arc. that was working well in CMSF.

Tried it, didn't work.

That Tiger continues to rotate in place after every move order.

The other Tiger works just fine, but that one is just totally FUBARed.

[Battlefront.com]

There was a specific bug with the Tiger that ParaBellum was "lucky" enough to uncover. Really odd that nobody else ran into this yet. Charles just told me that he found and fixed it for v1.01.

And now everybody can start thanking ParaBellum for saving their butts in some future battle, or curse him for not giving their Shermans a better target. You know, depending on which side you were likely to be on

Steve

[ParaBellum]

There was a specific bug with the Tiger that ParaBellum was "lucky" enough to uncover. Really odd that nobody else ran into this yet. Charles just told me that he found and fixed it for v1.01.

And now everybody can start thanking ParaBellum for saving their butts in some future battle, or curse him for not giving their Shermans a better target. You know, depending on which side you were likely to be on

Steve

Weee!

Thanks Steve. Did I mention that you are awesome?

[xian]

I've experienced some strange tank (stuart/sherman) behaviour when they are finishing a move near trees. They like to rotate to expose their flanks to enemy fire for no apparent reason. Then slowly rotate back again.

[Pak40]

Charles just told me that he found and fixed it for v1.01.

Steve

Uh oh, Steve, you just opened a whole can of worms by mentioning 1.01, but I know better than to ask about when it'll be out.

Aww screw it. When's it coming out?

[Blackcat]

"I've experienced some strange tank (stuart/sherman) behaviour when they are finishing a move near trees."

Heck, I have seen some odd Sherman behaviour in the middle of a move in an open field. A couple of days ago, I ordered a Sherman to move fast in a straight line across a wheatfield. It started out ok then after maybe 75 yards it started to do pirouettes in the middle of the field. No obstructions, no incoming, no known reason. Had to cancel all movement orders and start him off again to get the drivers head straight again.

I have become used to that fact that my Sherman drivers can't manage a clutch or steer in a straight line down a road or across a bridge, so one more bit of odd behaviour I just put down to too much calvados at breakfast.

[Battlefront.com]

Soon

The bug was not specific to the Tiger, but rather to a fairly unique situation. Because of the way various variables were set at the time, the Tiger's driver spotted a threat and was reacting to it by rotating the hull. The bug was the driver never let go of this threat, so wherever the Tiger was moved to the driver thought he needed to rotate to avoid the threat. The fix was, of course, to purge the "memory" of the threat at an appropriate time.

Which is to say the trees had nothing to do with this problem. And I'm going to guess that it's the same thing with Xain's issues. Since players use trees for cover very often there's a coincidental circumstance, not a case and effect relationship.

Steve

[Pak40]

Steve,

Not sure if this has come up, but I've run into another vehicle issue 3 times now:

After blowing a tank size gap into a hedgrow, and giving a move order to an armored unit to move through the gap, the vehicle will stop before the gap turn around and try to find an alternate route to the waypoint. I know the gap is big enough for a vehicle because on the second turn I sent another armored unit through the gap with no problem. Both instances were basically 90 degree perpendicular move orders, so it shouldn't have been an issue with any turning. Ive seen this happen with Shermans, Greyhounds, and M8 MC.

[argie]

Did you send the order in the same turn your engineers opened the gap or in the next one?

I may be wrong (I'm just speculating from my own similar experiences), but it seems that the path calculation for the AFV is done before the actual opening of the gap, thus it thinks the obstacle is still there.

When you plot in the next turn of the breaching, all works as expected.

[Aldaros]

Steve,

After blowing a tank size gap into a hedgrow, and giving a move order to an armored unit to move through the gap, the vehicle will stop before the gap turn around and try to find an alternate route to the waypoint.

I've seen this a number of times, including when the vehicle was stationary in front of the gap, and was already perfectly lined up, so it just needed to drive forward. I had one case with a halftrack where I lined it up, ordered it through, and came back a few minutes later to find it reversed in place. I'd already sent four Panthers and another Sd.Kfz. 251 through that same gap, so it was certainly wide enough.

I should note that I only play realtime in CMBN, so I don't know if the AI will recalculate its path in WEGO after a charge goes off. It certainly doesn't adjust in realtime, if the move order is issued before the charge goes off (just tested to confirm).

[Vanir Ausf B]

Steve,

Not sure if this has come up, but I've run into another vehicle issue 3 times now:

After blowing a tank size gap into a hedgrow, and giving a move order to an armored unit to move through the gap, the vehicle will stop before the gap turn around and try to find an alternate route to the waypoint. I know the gap is big enough for a vehicle because on the second turn I sent another armored unit through the gap with no problem. Both instances were basically 90 degree perpendicular move orders, so it shouldn't have been an issue with any turning. Ive seen this happen with Shermans, Greyhounds, and M8 MC.

This is a known bug. I sent a gameplay file to one of beta testers at his request. I have no idea if it's been fixed.

[Pak40]

Did you send the order in the same turn your engineers opened the gap or in the next one?

I may be wrong (I'm just speculating from my own similar experiences), but it seems that the path calculation for the AFV is done before the actual opening of the gap, thus it thinks the obstacle is still there.

When you plot in the next turn of the breaching, all works as expected.

No, the move orders were plotted on the following turn. 1st Greyhound turned around. The next turn, another Greyhound went straight through. The turn after that I tried two more vehicles and they both turned around.

BTW, in WEGO the pathing is calculated from the waypoint or pause order. You can tell a unit to pause for 30 seconds while your engineers blow a hole in the bocage, and they will go through the newly created gap.