Looky!, A 20mm Hornets Nest!

[tankgeezer]

A 20mm Hornets Nest, let's poke it with a stick! My F.O.team(veteran) crawling though the woods on a Sneak/Hide order, lays eyes on a 250/9 (lead element of a Stug platoon) as planned. The idiots open fire(!) instead of going into the hide mode! The 'Trak' stats slewing its turret(as the clock runs out); Gosh, whaddya think's gonna' happen next turn? This suicidal behavior has to be a bug.

[MikeyD]

An unbuttoned HT is a halftrack with an viable target poking his head out of the top. It could be argued that the shooter's chance of tagging the unbuttoned officer is too low currently but I still think they should be taking the shot. I was playing as Germans last night. My infantry were able to hole American HTs pretty regularly with their small arms, were often able to chase them off.

[flamingknives]

There is possibly something too this. I tend to set very short cover arcs on my snurgling units to prevent them having a pop at targets of opportunity unless I want them to. Muy FOs always have cover arcs, usually out to 100m in case someone pops up to spoil their day.

It would be nice to be able to set levels of aggression for your pixeltruppen, such as Passive, neutral and aggressive. Possibly that would tie into experience and motivation, so you couldn't set "passive" with fanatic troops but perhaps would be able to set neutral if experience was high enough. Therefore highly motivated but poorly trained troops would be prone to firing at and trying to close with the enemy without orders/interpreting orders to allow them to do so.

[Pheid]

Related to this is AT guns firing at infantry instead of conserving their ammo for enemy armour. I play wego and I've watched a gun burn through its entire ammo supply in one turn firing at (and missing) an infantry squad, with me completely unable to stop them.:mad:

Using short target arcs is a work around but it's not perfect by any stretch, there are too many times when an enemy vehicle is visible in the middle of the turn but has buggered off by the time the turn ends and I can do anything about it.

I like the idea for a 'posture' type system, or even just two buttons, one hold fire vs infantry and the other hold fire vs armour. That would cover most situations.

[tankgeezer]

Okay; dumb luck prevails once more & the GrogGodzz smileth upon me. The TacAI sends the 250/9 galloping off to guard the Stug Platoons left flank before the gunner could get a sight picture on me. I then ran my FO's back a couple of yards to hide in a wooded gully, this time they stayed hidden. The TacAI never bothered to send anybody into the woods to flush them out either, even though there were a couple of Marders following up the hill on overwatch. Now I had eyeballs on the entire assault from the rear. Looks like I'll have to use the short cover arc technique from here on out as a safety measure.

[flamingknives]

Related to this is AT guns firing at infantry instead of conserving their ammo for enemy armour. I play wego and I've watched a gun burn through its entire ammo supply in one turn firing at (and missing) an infantry squad, with me completely unable to stop them.:mad:

I've never seen any ATG expend anything but a small proportion of it's entire ammunition supply in a single turn, regardless of what it is firing at.

I've also found them to be suspiciously good at engaging infantry

Using short target arcs is a work around but it's not perfect by any stretch, there are too many times when an enemy vehicle is visible in the middle of the turn but has buggered off by the time the turn ends and I can do anything about it.

I like the idea for a 'posture' type system, or even just two buttons, one hold fire vs infantry and the other hold fire vs armour. That would cover most situations.

The old CMX1 "Cover Arc" and "Cover Armour Arc" would seem to suit reasonably well on that front. Naturally, some fuzziness should be included to allow units to break one or the other if the action gets too hot.

[Pheid]

I've never seen any ATG expend anything but a small proportion of it's entire ammunition supply in a single turn, regardless of what it is firing at.

I've also found them to be suspiciously good at engaging infantry

This was in one of the campaign scenarios, you are given two AT guns with 4 rounds each plus two ammo bearer teams with a further three each. This is against an indeterminate amount of armour. One of my guns shot off all four rounds at a squad in one turn, I won the battle but it's still annoying to have the AI waste ammo like that.

In general I think the tac AI does a good job, but the rate of fire from some of the units is a bit fast, tanks have this problem too but they generally have enough ammo that its not an issue.

A target armour arc would be perfect, I've never played CMx1 so I didn't know that used to be a thing.

[Amizaur]

An unbuttoned HT is a halftrack with an viable target poking his head out of the top. It could be argued that the shooter's chance of tagging the unbuttoned officer is too low currently but I still think they should be taking the shot.

Sometimes (usually?) a unit (ESPECIALLY a specialised one, like FO or AT team) has much more important tasks than just killing any enemy they can see. And to fitfull those tasks sucessfully, they usually have to:

A). stay alive

and

. remain undetected

Opening fire on ANY viable target doesn't help them with their PRIMARY and much more important tasks, like guiding the arty fire or ambushing enemy armor.

Even in case of an ordinary rifle squad, often you don't want them to open fire an ANY occasion, but when the tactical situation is fauvorable. In other case, you would never be able to do any ambush, to coordinate simultaneous open-fire from multiple units, or just convince the enemy you are not here, so he'll make a mistake. So they should obey the cover arc orders in a way, they did it in CMx1. And not "decide themselves".

The specialised units should know they are "specialised" and should use special rules of opening fire - the target of an AT unit is a TANK, NOT the commander's head. There is usually plenty of other, less exposed and vunerable infantry that can shoot the tank commander and stay alive, while also atrracting the attention of tank crew - giving the AT team an easier shot.

The AT team DOES NOT WANT to attract a tank's attention by themselves !!! It's the last thing they would want to.

And If I wanted the commander to be shoot at by this AT unit, I would give it a target or target light order.

For FO units the number one priority should be staying undeteced.

Both should also even more strictly obey the cover arcs, hide ect.

[Michael Emrys]

Looks like I'll have to use the short cover arc technique from here on out as a safety measure.

Any time I get an FO, one of the very first things I do with it is give it a 5m or 10m 360° covered arc. Also, any scout teams I have out get a 360° covered arc, but this time with a radius of 50m in case they bump into something that would take a shot at them. But mostly, I want them to be sneaking around trying to locate the enemy rather than getting drawn into a shoot out.

Michael