New Arty Routine

[PatG]

Jim - this "problem" keeps coming up and keeps being disproven to the point that it gets annoying and some people get a bit testy.

Personally I have never had this problem nor have many others. This isn't to say you aren't running into problems in your particular setup. You may well have discovered a legitimate bug - BUT - a test game is needed to prove it. Please take the time to post one and I'm sure the powers that be will take a look at it.

[BigJim]

LOL ok well I just had a battle where his (The AI) 81 mm morters killed more troops than my 150 MM arty in fact the only time my arty was really effective was when it was blue on blue (which happens alot in this game if you try to use it as close support).

I am sorry but if your not seeing this I would love to see a test game of urs.

I find that the supression routine works great on the Player troops but doesn't seem to apply to the AI. I mean in this last battle any 81mm shell dropped within a hex of my troops caused thme to rout (vets) while the AI troops took hit after hit 150 mm with little or no effect to moral.

It's not a real problem since it is just a game but it has NO bearing on what a battle is really like at all. This could just a well be called Lizards and Wizards and would be just as describtive

[thatguy96]

I just want to add in right now that artillery is not a very useful close support weapon. This is the very reason for tactics that involve the method of "grabbing your enemy by the belt" to negate his artillery advantage. They call it "danger close" for a reason.

You're also not giving us any additional info here. What type of terrain were your units on? Their units? Were they moving? Were you stationary? Did they have LOS to your troops? Did you to your targets? These all have a bearing on how effective artillery is in game and in real life.
I'd also be interested to see what the countries you're playing with.

I mean, I've had my guys in dense forest or jungle take a serious pounding from a half dozen 82mm mortars and not take casualities or serious suppression, and they were stationary. Also bear in mind that these were MIKE Force infantry, which as I've set them up in my Vietnam OOB pack have reduced exp and moral ratings to begin with

[Marek_Tucan]

The problem with the suppression may come from the fact that 81mm mortars do land more shells per turn on target than 15cm guns, so while 15cm do create more suppression and more chance to create a casaulty per shot, 81mm gets more shots, thus creating in result more casaulties and suppression.

[Pyros]

Hi BigJim,

Please try to compare results concerning the attached test scenario (slot500).

This is a one turn scenario with identical nations/units and identical pre-emptive heavy artillery missions for both AI and human.

Simply hit "END TURN" on turn1 and examine the casualty reports for both the AI and the human.

Since everything is mirrored try to note down the results of 20 tests and then calculate an average.

If there is anything (concerning the code) that works in favor of the AI then you should notice a significant difference.

cheers,
Pyros

[DRG]

You imply the game will deliberately target your best equipment .."the arty targeted all the high asset stuff and either outright smoked or made useless (killed all the guns so it couldn't fire) on 9 tanks BEFORE the first move."

The game is not programmed to favour the AI. The AI has no knowledge of your deployment and, if it does have artillery, will target areas behind your deployment line at game start either at random, or at points of interests that Andy programmed it to target.

You also imply that the AI gets an advantage over the Human player in regards to suppression......"the supression routine works great on the Player troops but doesn't seem to apply to the AI"

Again, the game is not programmed to favour the AI. Suppression is applied equally to both the human and AI based on a wide range of factors ( did the unit move or not, what level of suppression where they at before being attacked, etc ) that may or may not be obvious to the player.

You have complained about a number of aspects of this game and I have asked you on a number of occasions to provide us with a save game so we can see what you are seeing. To date I have not received one. This arty complaint ( "borg spotting") is the same one you brought up in June 2005 on the " SPAA or SPAG ?" thread of the WinSPMBT forum and Andy wrote a long post to you about that at the time and now a year and a half later we are right back to this again. The answer is the same now as it was then.

There are further similarities in your complaints from recent and past posts. From June 2005.." I could list dozen's but why bother, as a beer and pretzels game it's OK but bears NO resemblance to a real life situation. " and now in November 2006...."It's not a real problem since it is just a game but it has NO bearing on what a battle is really like at all. This could just a well be called Lizards and Wizards and would be just as descriptive "

In all that time you have not provided us with ONE shred of evidence of your assertions in the form of a save game. Also, wouldn't you think that if this was so obvious that everybody could see it that you'd have dozens ( perhaps hundreds ) of people supporting you and also asking for change? There's wasn't then are there aren't now.

The last time you brought this up Andy ended his post with the following statement.....

"Please demonstrate with hard evidence anything that backs up your assertions, and I'll gladly look into it."

We're still waiting . If you can support what you claim with proof we will look at it. If you are unable or unwilling to do so there is little point in you posting here

Don

[Charles22]

The only evidence that suppression favors the AI, comes from just giving the AI the side that is less susceptible to it, such as an AI Germany against the USSR or France. Most of my games have been played as Germany and the enemies get suppressed quite a bit quicker than my guys, but part of that has to do with strategy too. If you're throwing 4 tanks against 20 infantry units, the tanks might often get pinned just from the quantity of fire alone against them. This would be more so when playing a nation such as the USSR.

About the artillery thing though, I used to think the same way he did, and it might has been true back in the day (SPWAW probably) but when you see a number of barrages hit where you have absolutely nothing, then you know the use of a borg arti is non-existent or largely curtailed.

[Marek_Tucan]

I have already learned not to deploy at places the AI is likely to shell (ie places I would preemptively strike myself if I was playing the other side).
Have to say the initial bombardment from the AI is now similar to initial bombardments I've witnessed during PBEM.
As for the suppression, in some cases it may be frustrating to have salvo upon salvo falling at a well dug-in squad and it remaining in "pinned" status. Other time, with the same opponent and time, even a single _MG barrage is capable of causing "retreating" status... Just like IRL where you also have the die-hard's and the fleeing...

[Mobhack]

About the artillery thing though, I used to think the same way he did, and it might has been true back in the day (SPWAW probably) but when you see a number of barrages hit where you have absolutely nothing, then you know the use of a borg arti is non-existent or largely curtailed.

The "borg" artillery was true for the original SSI code. however as we have stated before on this forum and the old Yahoo! board, it was one of the first things we removed on recieving the source code.

The original SSI AI arty code did have advantages built-in to make it fall nearer to your troops (Whether located or not).

We removed this AI arty advantage, so new AI predictive code was required. My AI artillery code has to use prediction to plot any fires that are "blind", just like a player. Therefore it is interested in areas around objectives, approach road hexes and so on just like a human opponent. Sometimes it just plots random fire into the whole box of the enemy deployment zone, since there likely will be troops in there, somewhere.

A year or 2 back I added the "AI Interest" routines to give the AI a "clue" about things that a human opponent would see reported in the playback (such as rooster trails, fire weapons events and so on that are reported to the other player), details in the release history section of the game. (Otherwise it could only react to troops visible in its turn or random plotting - now, if you do the "hill dance" where you bring up a sucession of vehicles to fire from a hill, and end up all hidden behind that hill, it will tend to start some arty falling on you - as the number of "fire events" from that location go up and up, despite your running behind the ridge for cover after the firing).

So occasionally the AI gets lucky and drops a shed-load of predicted arty onto one of your blocks of troops. Most players see this as the AI having a lucky guess this time (which is what it did do), but there still happen to be one or 2 players who when this happen, come bleating here about "borg AI artillery". Simply not true for the SPCamo code. I happen to know this, since I wrote it ..

Cheers
Andy