SteveP Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Picture a linear minefield. One of your squads stumbles upon one of the minefield segments (and stops immediately, so that only one of the segments is discovered). You bring up engineers to mark that minefield segment. How do you get the next squad safely thru that one segment of the minefield without hitting the neighboring minefields? IRL, the squad would crawl in something of a single file across the marked field. In CMBN, each of the teams in the squad follows it's own path, which inevitably means more casualties. I have not found a solution and I wonder if this is a flaw in the AI's pathfinding system. I know already that one can solve this by breaking up the squad into teams. IMHO, the game shouldn't require that level of micro-management to handle this. OTOH, it's possible that this is what BFC expects players to do in this situation. Just wanted to put the question out there. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ranger33 Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 I'm guessing that re-writing the code so that the soldiers run in different spots would be another of those "things that would be nice be we don't have the time". A simpler and equally realistic change might be that while marking a known minefield, engineers will reveal directly adjacent minefields. That way you can at least clear them without first getting some of your men killed, which seems to currently be the only way to reveal mines. Once you get 2-3 fields cleared, it becomes a lot easier to move a squad through. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 As far as I'm concerned, the basic infantry unit in this game is the Team, not the squad with an option to split to teams. It's nice that the squad exists so that there can be different combinations of teams suited for various different tactical environments, but keeping squads together, especially the big US ones, just leads to woes I can easily do without, thanks very much. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c3k Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Let me know if you solve this one. I just had a small battle where a bunch of my guys went through a minefield. I then drove a tank through it. I haven't dared try to find out if the infantry could walk in the tank tracks. I wish they could... Ken 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Let me know if you solve this one. I just had a small battle where a bunch of my guys went through a minefield. I then drove a tank through it. I haven't dared try to find out if the infantry could walk in the tank tracks. I wish they could... Ken I don't think infantry can "walk in the tank tracks" as such. However, I have noticed that tanks and other vehicles can set off Anti-personnel mines, which AFAIK is realistic -- I don't think most AP mines have a sophisticated enough fuse to not detonate from the pressure of a tank, but detonate from the pressure of a foot. Note, though that this can degrade the tracks, so it doesn't come without cost! Further, it seems that infantry crawling through a mine tile where one or more of the mines have already been set off (regardless of how) are more likely to make it across unharmed. I haven't definitively tested this, but my play experience in both CMSF and CMBN supports this idea. In other words, the game does seem to model that there are a certain number of mines that are sown in any given Action Spot. The more that are detonated, the thinner the mines become in that Action Spot. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 That's what all those spare HQ units are for. REMF minefield detectors courtesy of M&M enterprises. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjkerner Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Alot of movie references today. I have tonnes of Egyptian cotton, if you're interested, sburke. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveP Posted September 30, 2011 Author Share Posted September 30, 2011 As far as I'm concerned, the basic infantry unit in this game is the Team, not the squad with an option to split to teams. If I thought that were true (in BFC's view), I probably would not play the game. The micromanagement would be too tedious for me, though I know other folks love it. I think being able to split into teams to deal with a distinct tactical problem is a great feature. Moving a whole company thru a keyhole in the minefield, team by team, is too much work for my tastes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Yeah, I've dealt with a situation like this before,and it can be kind of tedious moving a large group through a minefield gap, one team at a time. It would certainly be nice eventually to have the AI be smart enough to move a whole squad single file through a single action point gap in a minefield with a single orders plot. This gets tricky, though, because there are bunching issues and I'm not sure the AI is smart enough to "know" how to shake out all the teams, not have teams clump at one end or the other of the minefield waiting for the other teams to finish moving through the minefield, etc. Overall, I think it's just one of those situations we're going to have to resign ourselves to micromanaging, for the foreseeable future. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryujin Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Picture a linear minefield. One of your squads stumbles upon one of the minefield segments (and stops immediately, so that only one of the segments is discovered). You bring up engineers to mark that minefield segment. How do you get the next squad safely thru that one segment of the minefield without hitting the neighboring minefields? IRL, the squad would crawl in something of a single file across the marked field. In CMBN, each of the teams in the squad follows it's own path, which inevitably means more casualties. I have not found a solution and I wonder if this is a flaw in the AI's pathfinding system. I know already that one can solve this by breaking up the squad into teams. IMHO, the game shouldn't require that level of micro-management to handle this. OTOH, it's possible that this is what BFC expects players to do in this situation. Just wanted to put the question out there. Just crawl, even if there are adjacent mine fields, they should crawl through those OK I think (troops seem to be pretty safe crawling). I also have found crawling engineers to be a pretty good way to find additional mine fields with no to few losses, but they're not guaranteed to find them on the first pass. Not fast, but usually safe. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveP Posted September 30, 2011 Author Share Posted September 30, 2011 This gets tricky, though, because there are bunching issues and I'm not sure the AI is smart enough to "know" how to shake out all the teams, not have teams clump at one end or the other of the minefield waiting for the other teams to finish moving through the minefield, etc. Well, there are already movement commands which will cause a squad to move in single file, somewhat spread out, team by team (in fact, I gather some people think this is a defect in the game design ). The slow command will not do that, of course. But the AI is capable of it. Probably the easiest solution would be to allow engineers to use the mark mine command anywhere (though perhaps with some increased risk). I would think that would be realistic, since a set of mines in one location suggests the strong possibility of a larger field of them. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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