New Arty Routine

[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

[BigJim]

Ok guys get out ur six sided die roll it 10 times and tell me how many times in a row you get a one

[pdoktar]

AI lacks all the talents a human has, creativity, flexibility and planning ability. So why even start that the AI has advantages over a human player, because it has none whatsoever, lacking these three most important skills devised by nature, ever.

So AI could complain that you have these three "borg" traits that it lacks and deem the whole situation intolerable and unrealistic. Bu-huu the human beat me again..

[thatguy96]

BigJim said:
Ok guys get out ur six sided die roll it 10 times and tell me how many times in a row you get a one

Except that if I remember my basic probability getting a 1 ten times in a row is no more unlikely than getting any other number 10 times in a row. In fact, since the probability of rolling any specific number on a 6-sided die is 1/6, rolling any number combination should have the same probability, with 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 being no more statistically unlikely than any random combination of ten numbers from 1-6.

[BigJim]

Ok Thatguy96 I will take you up on your idea. I will give you 10 bucks everytime you roll back to back ones in a 10 roll series you give me 5 bucks each time you don't.

I will take 5 out of 6 odds every day and so will the boys at Vagas.

The facts are that everyone of you "if honest" can recount many times when a 95 percent chance to hit has been missed several times in a row in this game (this is tandamount to rolling the 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 you speak of.

My complaint about the arty routime is that Andy has programed in a situation where the arty can target what "a human would see" but has not programmed (as near as I can tell) the human player's arty propensity to "miss" the called target on the first shot by 1 or more hexes but rather it lands Borg like ON target. If this is what was intended fine let him say so.

As far as Don's lame claims about proof, his is the usual programmer/developers comment. If you can't rave about us get off our boards.

While the AI is not very good I admit, it does have already many "features" to keep it competitive. It only has to keep the player from achieving a "decisive" to have accomplished its (read the programmer) goals.

I view computer vs human as programmer vs human and so the programmers else why the rub

[Mobhack]

The AI may target hex X,Y where something was determined to be of interest, or it may decide to pound objective 17's hex X,Y.

However - unfortunately for your "borg" premise, the AI, just like you, is subject to the normal rules for scatter of the target hex, and then for the scatter of shells around the new target point. (And whether or not it has an observer with LOS to the target hex etc).

But then as DRG has already pointed out to you - we already seem to have had this discussion with you back on the old Yahoo group, over a year or so back.

As for your "ad hominem" attack on DRG - I will refer you to the Shrapnel board rules, where this sort of behaviour is specifically ruled against. Consider this your first warning.

Andy

[thatguy96]

BigJim said:
Ok Thatguy96 I will take you up on your idea. I will give you 10 bucks everytime you roll back to back ones in a 10 roll series you give me 5 bucks each time you don't.

I will take 5 out of 6 odds every day and so will the boys at Vagas.

The facts are that everyone of you "if honest" can recount many times when a 95 percent chance to hit has been missed several times in a row in this game (this is tandamount to rolling the 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 you speak of.

My complaint about the arty routime is that Andy has programed in a situation where the arty can target what "a human would see" but has not programmed (as near as I can tell) the human player's arty propensity to "miss" the called target on the first shot by 1 or more hexes but rather it lands Borg like ON target. If this is what was intended fine let him say so.

Hey, I'm just saying. This is exactly the reason why Vegas odds aren't based solely on odds, but on a little bookie intuition too. Also remember that a computer has to be programmed to be random, so it will never be 100% random in reality.