Improvement proposal I - OP fire draining

[Artur]

IMHO the greatest flaw of the SP engine leads to the tactic of OP fire draining. This often leads to burning out the opponent's MBT's OP fire with suicidal jeep charges then go in for the kill with your valuable armor without taking any risk. Because of that the seasoned players never leave almost anything valuable with a clear field of view(even a narrow one) in front of them at the end of the turn because the OP fire is so vastly ineffective.

There are turn based (or sort of) games where this issue is more or less solved. The first example is the Campaign Series East Front II, where the player can set up the type of the target to fire and the range to every specific unit. This way the gamey approach will not work any more.(Picture attached).

The other example is the Combat Mission series. There you can set every unit whether to fire at armor(blue arc) or other type of target(orange arc) within a specified arc.(Pictures attached.)

There is one more example of an attempt to handle this shortcoming in SPWAw with confirmation on op fire. This works quite well in on-line and solitaire battles, but cannot be applied in PBEM games and it becomes very tedious in larger battles(and is a bit too unrealistic IMHO). Random special OP fire was also introduced to deal with this phenomenon but it became way to unrealistic as well.

My proposal is to allow the setting of the unit type for the specific unit to fire at. This may be armor, (heavy and medium tanks), light armor(light tanks and ACs), and soft targets(infantry and soft-skin vehicles&guns). Guns could be made a separate group as well.
As far as I can see this would not take so much programming to get it done you simply have to put 4 selectable controls on the unit information dialog (like the weapons) and you can select-or deselect the unit types to fire at. A check before performing the op fire is not a big deal as well.

The very best solution would be to set different ranges for every target type, that would need more interface programming, but it would pay off very well I am sure. Even if the simple version is done it will enhance this game a LOT as well and finally this OP fire soaking comedy will come to an end.

Imagine that a combined arms force would be even more effective, if the heavy ATGs and tanks will not have their OP fire burned out by jeeps, ACs and light ATGs & CS units would deal with the soft skins. It will now be even more reasonable to mix the heavy and lighter equipment than it was before.

This would help the creating of scenarios where the scenario designer can set the combined arms defense or assault force to fire at the proper target which means a good improvement for the AI play as well.

Artur.

EDIT.
There has been a fierce debate since this first post. I insert a picture of an deited screenshot how this feature would look like:

There would be 6 unit groups based on unit classes which WinSPMBT already has.

Armor (Tanks and IFVs)
Light Armor (APCS and ACs)
Soft vehicles (jeeps, trucks)
Infantry (all kind)
Guns (ATG AA)
Air (Planes and helos)

You can select what to shoot at like you select the weapons. By default all are selected and the unit will fire at everything. If something is excluded then the units of thet type will not be fired at.

Of course this is a rough grouping and not prefect but it would fulfill it's main reason and that is making the op fire draining tactic not feasible any more. (New picture is zipped in the attachment. infoscreen.png)

[Captain_Cruft]

Totally agree in principle about "target selection". Quite possibly a lot of work though.

At least in SPWW2 you get op-fire ...

[Mobhack]

Loads of work involved to do such a thing. Needs to be designed in from the ground up, so really would require a completely new game engine. Also - if we give this wonderful advantage to the human player, what then do we do with the AI - if we want the AI to be more intelligent about opfire we then have to:

a) do a LOT of thinking about new AI algorithms
b) a LOT of AI code to implement them
c) A LOT of testing of these

then after c), return to a) and rinse and repeat till you have something that even halfway works. Then put out to playtesting, and find that they find out exactly how to exploit these new AI processes within 10 or so games...

That process is difficult enough if designed into a brand new game, but kludging and bodging it on top of a complete and sclerotic bit of spaghetti 1990's "C" adds several orders of magnitude to the process, while adding the extra side effects of the new code's unforseen interactions

So - not going to happen in this game engine.

Cheers
Andy

[Captain_Cruft]

Mobhack said:
kludging and bodging it on top of a complete and sclerotic bit of spaghetti 1990's "C"

How did that get past the PR department!? LOL

Respect for being honest, I wish we could see the same in other places.

[Artur]

Mobhack said:
Loads of work involved to do such a thing. Needs to be designed in from the ground up, so really would require a completely new game engine. Also - if we give this wonderful advantage to the human player, what then do we do with the AI - if we want the AI to be more intelligent about opfire we then have to:

a) do a LOT of thinking about new AI algorithms
b) a LOT of AI code to implement them
c) A LOT of testing of these

then after c), return to a) and rinse and repeat till you have something that even halfway works. Then put out to playtesting, and find that they find out exactly how to exploit these new AI processes within 10 or so games...

I am not sure thatis a hinder for the AI! Why? Because Scenario designers can set the units' OP fire in an effective way. Fooling the AI by draining the OP fire will not work any more!

Mobhack said:
That process is difficult enough if designed into a brand new game, but kludging and bodging it on top of a complete and sclerotic bit of spaghetti 1990's "C" adds several orders of magnitude to the process, while adding the extra side effects of the new code's unforseen interactions

Been there seen that. Spaghetti of C code with lots of global variables = The programmer's NIGHTMARE.

Mobhack said:
So - not going to happen in this game engine.

Cheers
Andy

Well as a last word I say this would be worth even a lot of work IMHO. Of course you can see what is feasible or not I hope some day you will find the means to solve this phenomenon.

Artur.

[Alby]

The OP fire routine in WAW uses something alot better than the "op fire confirm routine" (which I never use BTW)
There is the "special OP fire" as it is called.
just when you think an enemy has used all its shots, it can sometimes surprize you with more shots. this way, you never actually know if an enemy will return fire or not, after it has used all its op fire shots.
This routine would be much better than the "OP fire confirm" routine, IMHO

[CJSC]

[b]Artur said:Well as a last word I say this would be worth even a lot of work IMHO. Of course you can see what is feasible or not I hope some day you will find the means to solve this phenomenon.

Artur.

It would just about make the game worth playing; that and more effective artillery. I wish that aircraft were able to target more than one hex intelligently. But since they have always been unable to do so, I'm guessing that that is just a limitation of the game engine. If I could write a new one, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

[Marek_Tucan]

More effective artillery? You may adjust it in preferences.

[Artur]

Alby said:
The OP fire routine in WAW uses something alot better than the "op fire confirm routine" (which I never use BTW)
There is the "special OP fire" as it is called.
just when you think an enemy has used all its shots, it can sometimes surprize you with more shots. this way, you never actually know if an enemy will return fire or not, after it has used all its op fire shots.
This routine would be much better than the "OP fire confirm" routine, IMHO

The special OP fire results in unrtealistic number of kills sometimes.
1. If you attack a Panther with several(5) T34/85 from different direction it should not have that many OP fire points as it would have in WaW. (CM models this situation the best). So a unit without!!! support but some special OP fire can still prevail.

2. You have ona tank in a keyholed position and have some small calibre ATGs near it. Here the special OP fire helps a bit and because of this situation less unrealistic events occur, however the tanks' op fire can still be burned with scores of jeeps. The best solution would be to set every unit to fire at a specific target type. Even with special OP fire sometimes unrealistic results can occur(example 1.) on the other handt the spec OP fire may not be enough (example 2.)

Artur.

[c_of_red]

It's called combined arms for a reason. If you have a single unit that is unsupported, then it should be swamped and killed. Your 'soak off' is the game version of the single most common tactic every invented. It's presenting one unit with more targets then it can deal with.
This tactic is several thousnd years old and has survived the transition from clubs and spear thru Swords and Pilum thru Heavy Cavalry right up to Star Wars. The current thinking on defeating an ABM system is giving it more targets then it can deal with, which is the same thing the Roman legions did 2,000 years ago.
No, the tactic of swamping a single unit and overwhelming it with numbers is best countered by not leaving a unit out where it can be swamped. The Mil-speak term is unsupported.
In game terms, you need to have another unit with it's range set to where it will op fire at an enemy that is closing in for the kill. What works even better is having the rest of the platoon supporting.
Gaming the system by giving an unsported unit a majic weapon that can fire hundreds of times faster in the game then in reallife and never runs out of rounds is sort of silly, when it is easier to just learn the proper tactics.