AI tanks and preemptive HE

[rocketman]

When I have tanks and assault a village I usually hit houses I suspect contain enemy units with a couple of preemptive HE shells to either kill, rattle or flush out the enemy.

AI tanks though, never seem to do this, unless fired upon from a particular house (something you'll sure notice if you forget that covered arc...).

I feel that this is a flaw in the TacAI or was it really so IRL that this wasn't the MO?

[akd]

"Suspecting" is not something AI tends to be good at.

[womble]

"Suspecting" is not something AI tends to be good at.

No, but SOP should be... Not that there should be infantry in the first row of houses for this very reason...

[Sergei]

AIs in general aren't capable of assessing a complex tactical landscape in ways that even most 12-year olds are. Chess is limited enough for a good AI to beat human, but even Go, despite its deceivingly apparent simplicity, is very hard for AI coding. For a wargame like CM there would have to be some kind of understanding of what targets are 'suspect' and what kind of response there should be to them. A small hamlet in the steppe is a different thing than a busy megalopolis, but for the AI it's just buildings anyway.

And then you have situations where it would be the completely wrong thing to do. Imagine if in CMBO scenario Villers-Bocage - Tiger! the British tanks started firing at buildings in the village when the only threat to them was Witmann's tank? Unfortunately the AI cannot read briefings, either.

[xian]

But perhaps they could continue to fire HE at a building where a unit was previously targeted but has subsequently dropped out of LOS.

Or do they do this already?

[Sergei]

There's a TacAI mechanism that tells them to try to keep firing even some time after they have lost visual contact to the enemy, but it doesn't kick in every time and I think it mainly applies to small arms/MG fire so that eg. a Marder wouldn't use up all of its HE on an empty building. I think the AI could be more proactive with regards to unit contacts, although the difficulty probably lies in just what is a good way to react to them - it shouldn't happen when your men are low on ammo, they shouldn't start firing at a distant contact icon if there is one much closer to them, etc.

[DavidFields]

When I have tanks and assault a village I usually hit houses I suspect contain enemy units with a couple of preemptive HE shells to either kill, rattle or flush out the enemy.

AI tanks though, never seem to do this, unless fired upon from a particular house (something you'll sure notice if you forget that covered arc...).

I feel that this is a flaw in the TacAI or was it really so IRL that this wasn't the MO?

Hmmm....I do not tend to do this, in general. Do you use Wego, or real-time? I use Wego, and would be generally concerned about using up too much ammo in a turn.

There are exceptions...but I would think the advantages are not so overwhelming to do this, and the possible disadvantages are significant, that trying to have the AI do it would be lowish priority.

Just giving us and the AI armor covered arcs, and then programming the AI to use them correctly, would be huge, and I think much higher up the list.

[Kat Johnston]

Having the AI identify and target "suspicious" locations - even if it only has a limited range of options, even if the fire is not heavy, sustained, coordinated, intelligent or anything else - would make a difference to play, because it'd take away the element of security you have when playing against it that you don't have against a human player.

And seeing an enemy squad or vehicle pause to spray fire into the third building on the left wouldn't be any sillier than seeing them sprint down a wide open street into waiting guns...