40mm Fratricide/Suicide

[black_prince]

I was recently playing the All Flights Delayed battle from the NATO module when I witnessed a rather bizarre spectacle. I was clearing a bulding in one of the compounds with a squad of Panzergrenadiers when they encountered the remnants of a Syrian infantry squad cowering in one of the rooms. My Panzergrenadiers began picking them off with their G36s and two of them rushed over to a corner where there were 3 Syrians cowering together. The Panzergrenadiers then took aim and I was expecting a stream of tracers to finish them off. What actually happened was that I heard the distinctive 'pop' of a UGL being fired, then saw an explosion at the feet of the Panzergrenadiers who promptly fell down dead.

As I play in RT, there is no saved game to back up my story but I can assure you that this is not the result of some misunderstanding on my part. There were no other Syrians left alive in the compound at this stage and this took place on the ground floor of a building in the corner of a walled compound. On checking afterwards it turned out that one of my dead pixeltruppen was in fact the section UGL man. I'm posting this not so much because I'm annoyed at what happened but because I've never seen this happen before and was wondering if it may have something to do with behaviour modifications brought in with the latest patch.

Has anyone else ever witnessed this sort of thing before? If so was it pre or post the v1.32 patch?

[George MC]

Fractricide has been in since the game first appeared. It's the HE stuff to watch out for. I've had several sections of Brit infantry mowed down by their own Warriors. They dismounted then charged up a berm just as the Warriors ID some Syrians lurking in a building. The unlucky Brits ran at full tilt into a stream of lead...

So moral of the story is take care with your arcs of fire especially from the HE chuckers

[black_prince]

Thanks for the reply George (and also, thanks for some of your great scenarios, UK Armoured Assault is a favourite of mine). However, I wasn't surprised so much by the fratricide as I've splashed my own guys on many occassions and been delighted by the fact that this was incorporated as a feature. What took me aback was the fact that my panzergreandier fired his UGL at point blank range at an enemy cowering at his feet. I'm not even sure that a 40mm grenade would detonate at such close range in RL but I was more concerned by the behaviour.

[Redwolf]

There is code in the game that takes friendly positions into account when firing HE. It is supposed to prevent firing HE too close to friendlies (fire will usually simply stop).

It mostly works but it is thrown off by the "misaim" introduced via the action spots. HE fire will cease based on the spot it wants to fire at, not the spot it actually fires at after action spot adjustments.

[Dietrich]

In recent playing of a mission from Paper Tiger's "USMC Gung Ho!" campaign, I noticed several instances where fire team leaders were overzealous with their M32 MGLs inside buildings and fragged members of their own squads, even of their own fire teams.

Conversely, in the same mission I made sure to keep my M1A1s positioned so that they wouldn't end up fragging Marines in the process of opening fire on just-spotted Syrians in the town.

Given the minimum arming distance of launched grenades, wouldn't it make sense to make pixeltruppen use launched grenades (i.e. rifle grenades; but the MGL isn't a rifle, innit? =P) only on targets beyond, say, hand grenade range? Something they'll keep in mind for CMSF2, hopefully.

[Noltyboy]

Just had one of my UK lads do it, the retard...

[Boche]

I thought that, as far as I know UGL rounds have a distance timer (cant remembe the exact name atm, but you get wjat I mean) right? i would suppose this is modelled but...