Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

I've played several assault battles vs AI, and I feel that AI using too many mines. It just cover all the battlefield , including victory hexex by mines. IMHO it makes the battle less fun:
1. It enforce primitive tactic - all the tactic is to claer mines to victory hexes, or air assault.
2. Because AI spending almoste all on mines it have not enough points to buy essential mobile forces - usually it have 3-4 tanks in the assault battle.
3. Because all the map covered by mines AI can't move and conterattack. Then trying move forces to regain captured hexes it just stuck in it's own mines.
My suggestions - decrease amount of mines 4-5 times, deploy them only on the roads/bridge/fords, around victory hexes and bunkers. Spend freed support point on the bunkers, mobile forces, ATGM, SAM, field and off-board artillery. The game will be a lot more fun, and no less challenging.

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

Just how many points are you using for these battles and how big is the map and what nations are you using??? All of that is critical information I need to investigate anything like this. Don't assume what you tried is universally true for the entire game for all the number of combinations available to set up an assualt

A 25,000 point assault does not generate enough mines for the AI defender to "cover all the battlefield" on a 100x100 map, not even close so I need to know what you set up your game for

Don

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

I'm playing generated campin, I'm getting 4500-6000 points for core force.
The size of map - I have nothing compare to, it's a standart map generated by campain. By "all the map covered by mines" I don't mean that every hex covered by mine, but all AI area covered by the strips of mines from top to bottom, with gap of around 3-4 hexes between strips.

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

PavelI have had the same results when playing a generated campaign. Playing 7000 point games I am finding the unending mine fields to be a real pain. Also the changes from the older games on mines makes them much harder to clear.

Someone suggested that you should use engineers to clear them. How?!? Every time the engineers move they are torn to pieces. And the inf in their dug in positions are almost unsuppress-able. (when you have a MRLS barrage hit one, then hit it with the fire of 10 tanks and support vech at 200 meters and it still kills half of the first engineer platoon who moves, one hex, at 600 meters something is wrong. Lots and lots of smoke is the only chance for engineers and then the small mortars kill and suppress most of them so that they can not remove mines. My MRLS and 155mm accurate barrages don’t even make them duck!) Mine removing tanks are the only units that can take the super accurate small arms fire and still remove mines. But with out full terrain info with mouse over, like in the earlier versions of SP, means that you loose most of your mine tanks to trackings after they stumble into a mine field.

The tedious and over costly assaults on the generated campaigns is ruining the most stable and weapons rich version of SP yet! It’s a shame.

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

There is no "Standard" map generated by a campaign. You have total control of the map size in preferences when you start the campaign along with how many points for the core. ( you can also change the map sizes between games if you want ) You can tell me how big it is by starting your campaign and place your cursor over the extreme lower right side of the map and reading the map co-ordinates that appear at the top of the screen. That will say something like "Hex 99,79" which indicates the map is set to 80/100 in preferences

Mine removal is covered in the game guide under Mines and Field Engineering. If you still have trouble after reading that perhaps one of the other players on the list can help you with this. A 4500-6000 point core with a medium sized map shouldn't be generating an impossible number of mines for you to deal with

Don

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

If your engineers are being "torn to pieces" you are not surpressing the defences enough with arty and smoke ( yes, I did read what you wrote about your attempts to surpress the dug in defenders and I KNOW they *can* be surpressed ). Mine removal is covered in the game guide under "Mines and Field Engineering" you do NOT remove mines with engineers and mine clearing tanks by moving INTO the mined hex. You do that by staying just outside the minefield with the engineers or engineer tanks and point them at the mined hex then let them work and give them full support while they do their work.

If you still find this not to your liking you can always turn mines off in preferences and they will be deactivated when you play assualts but I'm sure there will be other players willing to offer you suggestions on how to deal with them. They CAN be dealt with.

Don

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

Smoke is the engineer squads friend. A 120mm plt with smoke is worth more than a MLRS. Of course 8 inch fire will supress anyone.

BTW what nations are you playing. I have run into this against the Chinese in 2006 and at 30000 points.

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

and the map size would be good info to know as well..

Don

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

“Mine removal is covered in the game guide under "Mines and Field Engineering" you do NOT remove mines with engineers and mine clearing tanks by moving INTO the mined hex. You do that by staying just outside the minefield with the engineers or engineer tanks and point them at the mined hex then let them work and give them full support while they do their work”

We are not communicating. I have read the mine and field engineering rules. I have played SP since it came out, all versions. This is the first version that it doesn’t tell you “Mine Present” when you mouse over and you can see the mines. Sometimes your tank is on top of the hex with mines.

I know that you clear mines from one hex out WHEN YOU SEE THEM!!!!!
When your mine clearing tank finds the mind field by driving into it you are stuck there until you get tired of waiting. IF you are lucky you will see the msg that the follow on mine clearers and the stuck tank have cleared the field. Only sometime you miss the msg and discover that the hex was not cleared because when you move your tank it is tracked. The tank itself covers the single mine so you can’t tell that the hex is cleared or not till you leave the hex or you have a slightly smoking immobilized take to mark the hex.

On the Engineering units, they are meat in the open and his mortars seem to hit them every turn so even with battle field taxies (APC or Choppers) once they are deployed, even behind huge smoke screens, his small arty keeps them too suppressed to do much good.

I am playing a 20 game campaign as Brits against China, NK, and Iran, 2005-2015, mostly desert. Standard size maps. I have added enough to my core I might have 10,000 points in play now. As the Brits I don’t get anything bigger than 155mm arty. So I go with MRLS (it kills soft skins and is rough on Inf in the open) and 105mm for my smoke missions and pin-point suppressive fire. (mortars don’t have enough ammo for the long mission it is to burn through 25 hexes of mines with supporting mortar fire.) I buy as many drones as I can to burn up his SAMS and give my air mobile troops a chance to get a few victory hexes. (when his troops come out of their holes I can hurt them.) My MRLS are part of my core unit. With my support points I get Challenger 2 MPs, Drones and 105mm batteries. I have lowered their accuracy down to 50 and the T-62s only get one drone a pass now. His SAMs can’t hit my drones but are death on my Choppers. If I let the smoke get too thin his Inf kill any soft skinned tracks at 600meters or less, normally the turn the smoke is thinned.

I have all the settings to run the game as fast as it will run.

I mostly like the game for the generated campaign games. I like building and maintaining my fighting unit. I really love that I can add to my core in this version. Very very nice. The assaults against the 25+ hex of mine belts are just a little tedious and frustrating.

Pavel

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

BTW my map size is 98-78. The default I guess.

Pavel

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

Mine map size 97 -77
And I'm not telling that amount of mines make game impossible. It's not even difficalt to make marginal victory. I'm telling that mine-clearing game is tedious and not much fun. Look up my first post. It's just clean-clean-clean , small fight at the end, victory. No tactical depth. If you try any movmnet not along straight path made by minecleners you end up with immobilized armor. And the amount of turns not enough to make long infantry marches. If someone want insane amount of mines, my be it would be a the good idea to make option - "AI mine heavy"

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

OK, we have games being played on 100x80 maps and it looks like the assault is being played with anywhere between 5000 and 10,000 points for the attacker. If you want to see EXACTLY what the AI's doing ( with variations, the mine belts are not laid the same way twice ) all you need to do is set up that map size in a generated battle and set player 1 ( you ) points to 5000, 7500 or 10,000 ( whatever you like ) and P2 to XXX then allow AI purchase of both sides and HUMAN deploy. When you press continue you will be offered to deploy the P2 side. Press AUTO DEPLOY then take a look at the map and you will see how many mines the AI buys when it's defending against the type of assault force you are using in the campaign. The AI deploys and buys the same way in a generated battle and it does in a generated campaign.

Once you've had a look around exit the game then start up another one once again with both sides set to auto purchase and HUMAN DEPLOY then when the option to deploy is give choose AUTO DEPLOY. Look at these maps closely and observe the way the AI deploys the mines when defending against an assault with the points you have chosen and, I think you'll agree those mine belts look less formidable when viewed this way

Don

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

I did the test, and that is not a picture I was getting in the generated campain, at least some battles. I the generated battle there was only one belt of mines, not even complete. In the generated campain there was at least five belts of mines (but may be more) - as I told mine belts were passing through victory hexes.

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

DRG
A few quick questions concerning mines. What is the percentage chance of a unit setting off a mine. when I play if there is single mine marker in a hex it almost always will kill a vehicle if each marker represents 10 mines does this mean that there are 10 of each type of mine (anti vehicle and anti personnel). Also when a mine had detonated does is the number of mines reduced in the hex. and one last question does artillery fire into a hex have a chance of detonating mines (how about FAE's or napalm)?

Thanks for any info
Tom D

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

The percentage chance of a unit setting off a mine is relatively low. It goes up considerably per hex travelled, and if the mine is undetected. Scout car 15 hexes along a road and trip over mine is usually a BOOM. Engineer unit travelling a Hex or so is usually a "detects minefield" event.

But this is basically already covered in the game manual, section on "Mines and field engineering", as is what you are otherwise asking.

Artillery fire does not clear mines, or barbed wire. Clearing mines is as per the above section in the manual.

If you are not sure about how mines work, then create a training assault scenario for yourself. Leave the AI defender with just the HQ and set the V-hexes to him and 100+ points. Leave these on one side of the map. Buy mines etc and place near your assaulters. Set turns to 40 or so. Since you built the scenario - you will know where they are. Try charging things across them, various engineering techniques etc. Quit the training scenario and if necessary, restart, or edit in the scenario generator to buy different troops, change the defensive layout etc.


Cheers
Andy

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

Next time you see this attach a save game and we'll look at it. If you are attacking with X number of points the AI should be buying approx the same number of mines in a generated battle or a generated campaign. However, let me clarify.... that does not mean it will for example, by 50 points worth of mines each and every time. It might be 30 one time and 80 the next then 50 the time after but you shouldn't be seeing a single belt of mines in a generated battle and five belts of them in a campaign.

As with all things in this game we need to SEE what you see. Just telling us about it doesn't help us in our investigations much

Don

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

In this save there are no five mine belts, more like three, but still to many IMO, especially on the north

Re: Assault vs AI - too many mines ?
 

OK - that save was very useful.

I have debugged this, and there was some extra code which kicks in during a campaign game, and this was selectiong mines as 1/50th of the assaulting player's force value. So with your almost 10K points of core, you were always going to meet 198-200 mine points when assaulting. (This bypassed all the normal AI points buy routines http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif!

I'll fix this little buglet now.

Cheers
Andy