Improvement proposal I - OP fire draining

[Artur]

DRG said:
The game already has built in selective op-fire. I let this debate go on hoping SOMEONE experienced would make this point while I work in WinSPWW2 but I see that is not to be.

DRG said:
Tanks will not open fire on jeeps and trucks unless they are right on top of the tank. The game allows secondary units the "privilege" of dealing with things like trucks

Let's examine the assertion that all you need to do is send in two jeeps ahead of your heavy tanks to draw all the enemy fire.

Really? I don't think so.

Yes they will not open fire on trucks and jeeps. If I ever told jeeps is because of my SPWaW past and some old instincts syill work. I tested a hell lot my African campaign I got to know the engine to a certain extent, and yes jeeps don't draim. BUT.

I also modified your 2 excellent scenarios. (OFF the maps are beautiful ON)
In the first scen I changed the trucks and jeeps to APCS and other light armored carriers which can do no harm to the Israeli tanks. I also added an infantry company.

In the second scenario I made all the changes above and I also changed most-but not all- Israely MGs to M136 a light man portable AT weapon. This is a combined arms defense with the tanks dealing with tanks, MGs dealing with infantry and the M136 dealing with the light armoured vehicled in orser not to harass the other units. Now this cannot be done in WinSPMBT.

Look Don, I really appreciate your and Andy's work very much. This is a very good game this is why I am still playing SP -I abandoned SPWaW for good- and not Combat Mission which has a more advanced engine, but this game has the OOB's the modern stuff and the good designer tools. And it looks very cool IMHO of course I like 2D stuff .
You have corrected many irrealistic phenomenons which made the SP engine much better like the reverse moving, the load/unload cost, reentering rebvetments, realistic artillery delay etc.

This op fire draining is the worst disease of the SP engine
and it can be cured as mentioned above. I also know doing this in the C code spaghetti is not simple. But it is very much worth doing it IMHO. (together with the spotting events. Cannot you make them visible only to one side?)

If these phenomenons wuld be solved WinSPMBT would have almost every feature a gamer would like to have. (Some bridge layers on the streams are missing). With these correction I can imagine that I would spend playing with it another 10 years.

Everyone, please try the attached scenarios to see what I am talking about.

Wish you all the best,
Artur.

[narwan]

Artur, I'm sorry I'll have to disagree with you. The OP fire draining is not a 'disease' of the game engine. As c_of_red already pointed out, OP fire draining simulates an age old tactic.
You're also wrong on assuming an APC can't harm a tank, at least your reasoning is faulty. APC's carry infantry. Infantry carry weapons that can kill tanks. So tanks kill APC's whenever and whereever they can. Cause they don't know if the APC in question actually carries infantry or not. The tanker has to assume it does.
Same for light armor, it may not threaten the front of your MBT but if it can work around your line, most 'light' units carry enough punch to penetrate the side or rear armor. You're also assuming the tank (crew) think only of themselves. They will probably figure that that light unit will be a threat to some of their colleagues and try to take it out since they often have the best chance of doing so (and in relative safety).

[Artur]

Well I am sorry but disagree as well. Have you tried the scenario? I see 0-zero downloads. Now if you download the scenario you would have seen that those APCs will not come close because there is a wall of M136s to deal with light armor. If it unloads infantry there are the machine guns a bit backward. I accept different views but criticizing without even taking an effort to look at the scenarios looks odd to me.

With op fir draining you simply send in infantry at 2000m distance and the armor will shoot at it while infantry cannot put a dent in the armor. It will also shoot at the APCs at 2000m even though APCs cannot hurt them from there as well. Now I can imagine you say to set the range lower BUT I want to engage the tanks on 2000 m because I have an edge on arnmor and aiming and gun power.
Nowdays seasoned players do not rely on OP fire at all because of the OP fire draining. I have been there have done that. I enter a spot with infantry and make the armor shoot at my infantry from where I cannot hurt it very much. after it has run out of shots I go in with the armor. If I have scout armored cars to sacrifice I drain OP fire with them.

With a combined arms defense it is useful to set who to shoot at what type of target. It is implemented in several games I believe not without a reason.

Even if I have a tank only force I may want to save 1-2 tanks from 5 tanks to shoot only at heavy/medium tanks.
This way even if the opponent sends in tons of OP fire drainer units which are dangerous at close range I want to have one gun left for the big boys. Or I may want to do the opposite, and keep one tank for general shooting and leave 4 for the heavies. It all depends on the recon information gained in the battle.

Please take a look at the scenarios.

Artur.

[Artur]

One more thing to add:

If the op fire drainer units will not make the armor fire the opponet will not even know there are tanks nearby since they are not spotted, and will not reveal themselves. You cannot drive your APCs with infantry to the armor you have not spotted. If you come up with MBTs it is too late. If the APCs are wonderinfg too far they will be taken out by the M136s.

Once again jut take a look at the scenario I posted.

Artur.

[narwan]

No I haven't looked at the senario and I won't. Not that I don't appreciate the sincere effort you make here, but anyone can make a specific scenario to suit the exact point they try to make so it seems like a bit of waste of time. I'll take your word the scenario show what you say it does.

You make the same mistake in your posts above that I pointed out above. For one, tanks will want to take care of APC's BEFORE they unload their infantry. The statement of 'machine guns will take care of unloading infantry' is gaming the system (or trying to) not to mention the fact that mg's will often fail to do any damage to unloading infantry. Once infantry units (squads, teams, etc) are out of the APC the tanks have lost their opportunity to deal relatively easily with a potentialy deadly threat. Secondly your assumption that infantry can't hurt tanks at 2000m range is also 'gaming the system'. In the game you can see the difference between a squad and an atgm team. In real life the tankers would just see soldiers in the woods line. They can't know, or at least can't be sure, that they don't carry atgm's. If they're wrong that could be a very costly mistake. Suppressing them with (gun)fire untill the arty arrives would be the prudent thing, which the game mimics. And there are of course squads who actually do have atgm's with a 2000m range as part of their weapons load. How will you differentiate between those and others (code wise)? Or between a dragon team (range 1000m) and a TOW team (range over 3000m)? Will tanks use OP fire against only the second at 2000m range? Or neither? Or both?
How about a TOW II team in overwatch and a Ferret approaches. Using the TOW will be a huge overkill, but if the Ferret is allowed to close, it could be deadly to the TOW team. How will you deal with that (code wise)?

You suggest a certain ideal situation in which your suggestions would work and seem like an improvement. But turn it around, make it much less suitable and see if it still works. Delete the mg's or M136's. How will your suggestions effect the outcome then? What additional work would it entail to get an optimal solution then? Now delete both, what would be needed then. Now delete the tanks and replace them with heavy SP-ATGM's. How would it work then, etc, etc.

So between the assumption of unrealistic knowledge on the part of the units in overwatch and the complications your suggestions bring along (with all the possibilities of players finding ways to exploit those) I don't see them being a significant improvement, at least not yet. And since I don't consider the OP fire draining issue broken I'd prefer it as is.

[Artur]

narwan said:
You make the same mistake in your posts above that I pointed out above. For one, tanks will want to take care of APC's BEFORE they unload their infantry. The statement of 'machine guns will take care of unloading infantry' is gaming the system (or trying to) not to mention the fact that mg's will often fail to do any damage to unloading infantry.

Yes, that is true. You have to try to destroy the infantry while they are in APCs. Now if they get close they are destroyed by the M136s. If they uload the infantry they are pinned by the MGs to an extrent that they will not move.
Setting to fire on a specific unit always depends on the situation. You have to have good recon anyway. If the majority of the force is APCs with infantry then you allow your tanks to fire at everything while you give your ATGMs to fire at the tanks if you have a few. If the big majority is tanks you set them to attack tanks etc.

narwan said:
Secondly your assumption that infantry can't hurt tanks at 2000m range is also 'gaming the system'. In the game you can see the difference between a squad and an atgm team. In real life the tankers would just see soldiers in the woods line. They can't know, or at least can't be sure, that they don't carry atgm's. If they're wrong that could be a very costly mistake. Suppressing them with (gun)fire untill the arty arrives would be the prudent thing, which the game mimics. And there are of course squads who actually do have atgm's with a 2000m range as part of their weapons load.

Well you have a point here, the game works like this you know who is on the other side. Of course the commandes have some effective googles . You have a point here if we stick to realism .

narwan said:
How will you differentiate between those and others (code wise)? Or between a dragon team (range 1000m) and a TOW team (range over 3000m)? Will tanks use OP fire against only the second at 2000m range? Or neither? Or both?
How about a TOW II team in overwatch and a Ferret approaches. Using the TOW will be a huge overkill, but if the Ferret is allowed to close, it could be deadly to the TOW team. How will you deal with that (code wise)?

Very good question.
They can use the unit classes grouped into a few groups like: Heavy/medium armor, Light armor&APCs and armoured cars, infantry like normal infantyr squads + AT squads, light vehicles, guns, air, AND all types is still an option. Maybe AT inf would be a different group.

Regarding the ferret it is advised tio have an inf squad near the ATGM, or an RPG squad. They have some short range AT weapons to deal with the Ferret. And if only the Ferret approaches the ATGM squad will not give away it's position for a cheap armoured car .

narwan said:

You suggest a certain ideal situation in which your suggestions would work and seem like an improvement. But turn it around, make it much less suitable and see if it still works. Delete the mg's or M136's. How will your suggestions effect the outcome then? What additional work would it entail to get an optimal solution then? Now delete both, what would be needed then. Now delete the tanks and replace them with heavy SP-ATGM's. How would it work then, etc, etc.

You get the point here. This improvement will help those who apply combined arms. If one a capability of a force is gone (like you proposed delete the MGs or the M386s ) then of course you have to shoot with the remaining forces at everything. This feature is not to be used in every situation of course. But it really gives an edge to a player who applies combined arms and his force has every different capability needed for the mission. That is what it is all about!!! Of course there are many cases when the current way of operating is the best solution. But IMO there are also a lot of cases where this improvement could help a LOT and could disable a lot of gamey tactics.

narwan said:
So between the assumption of unrealistic knowledge on the part of the units in overwatch and the complications your suggestions bring along (with all the possibilities of players finding ways to exploit those) I don't see them being a significant improvement, at least not yet. And since I don't consider the OP fire draining issue broken I'd prefer it as is.

I accept your opinion, it looks like we can't convince each other. Such is life .

For the rest I suggest to try the scenarios above. I'm just like that .

Artur.

[narwan]

The point is that as a player you have no on the spot control over the OP fire as it is resolved (assuming we're talking about PBEM suitability here). Which means that whatever system you come up with to resolve this has to carried out and decided upon by the AI, and NOT by the player.
That brings a whole additional set of questions into the equation. For example, when are the different types of units mutually supporting? For a player it may be easy to see and decide upon but try translating that into code. I'll give you a few examples:
The tanks are in position but the mg's and light AT units are still moving up (1 hex away from final position). How is the AI to know that these close by units are not in position yet? The different units will not occupy the same hexes so they'll have different fields of fire. What happens if only some units can see the potential target?
If you elect to use a system in which you set these parameters as a player during your turn imagine this:
at the end of your turn the artillery and/or air strikes neutralise one of your elements (for example all light AT) either by suppression, smoke or outright kills. Now the tanks are the only units with AT capability but they won't fire since you set them for heavy opponents only.
The complications go on and on. In my view to the point that the disadvantages, both in-game and coding wise outstrip the potential benefits of changes by a wide margin.

Another problem, you suggest dividing units into categories but how do you distinguish? A T34/85 will be a MBT in some circumstances (depending on year and/or nations involved) and a bulky light tank in others (in relation to other available units). When does it stop being an MBT and become a light tank? What are the parameters? Repeat for scores of others units in many different year-nations set-ups. Imagine having to keep track of it as a player.
If you don't distinguish, in other words, a T34/85 remains an MBT throughout the whole array of years and nations available in the game, you could end up with Abrams that do fire at a T34 but not at a bmp2, or centauro, or amx10rc.

As an alternative solution, go outside the code. Determine and define the exact procedures you find questionable and/or gamey. Let your opponent know and agree not to use these procedures. It won't solve all your issues with Op fire but will adress some of them.

Narwan

[c_of_red]

"With op fir draining you simply send in infantry at 2000m distance and the armor will shoot at it while infantry cannot put a dent in the armor. It will also shoot at the APCs at 2000m even though APCs cannot hurt them from there as well. Now I can imagine you say to set the range lower BUT I want to engage the tanks on 2000 m because I have an edge on arnmor and aiming and gun power.
Nowdays seasoned players do not rely on OP fire at all because of the OP fire draining. I have been there have done that. I enter a spot with infantry and make the armor shoot at my infantry from where I cannot hurt it very much. after it has run out of shots I go in with the armor. If I have scout armored cars to sacrifice I drain OP fire with them."

I will try one more time. If you leave a unit out by itself, you deserve to have it shoot off all its shots and be killed. GOOD tactics requires that you support that unit with another unit, so that there are several units that can opfire. Then Soak off tactics just create heaps of points for the defender as the burning hulks and bleeding bodies pile up in front of the defesive line. Fighting like you want to fight is what gave us trench warfare. Without the ability to swamp a target, there would be nothing but two lines shooting at each other. Instead of piling on code to fix a feature, why not learn tactics? In this case tactics being ways to isolate a unit from it's support and swamping it to create gaps in the defense that can be exploited. Can't do that when you have units with Majic weapons that can fire an infinite number of times and never run out of ammo.
I neither know nor care what scenario you are discussing. It sounds to me like a good reason to avoid scenarios, which I already do.

[Artur]

c_of_red said:

I will try one more time. If you leave a unit out by itself, you deserve to have it shoot off all its shots and be killed. GOOD tactics requires that you support that unit with another unit, so that there are several units that can opfire. Then Soak off tactics just create heaps of points for the defender as the burning hulks and bleeding bodies pile up in front of the defesive line.

My dear firend, where have you red that I wish to improve a single and isolated unit's chances? If had you red our constructive and based on facts debate with Narwan you could have red that this feature gives an edge to the players applying combined arms. That can't be done with one unit can it?

Cheap units can soak off OP fire. Let us play a little math.
I recenty played a game in 89 era West germany against East Germany against a pro. I was with the West Germans and had tons of Fuchs APC. It costs 30 or 40 points. The T72 has 3 shots even if it had not moved. Now I spend 120 points to drain the shots and then I go in with my LEO2 for the kill. I have heaps of burning hulks and yet I gained more than 200 points for 120 points or even less if the T72 missed one or more of the APCs.
If there are more tanks I use up more APCs but the loss/gain ratio stays the same.

If you have other weapons systems it lessens this phenomenon but it can still be exploited by engaging the APCs on long range from the defensive line. (in case of supporting RPGs RCLs ATGs or even T55s which have a much less penetrating guns.)

And I did not mention the infantry, which can drain many shots even without risking the total destruction of a squad. (it is more effective to soak OP fire with inf at a distance)

c_of_red said:
Fighting like you want to fight is what gave us trench warfare. Without the ability to swamp a target, there would be nothing but two lines shooting at each other.

You are right about the fact that defense will be more effective. As far as I know in the military they say you need 3:1 odds to perform a successful assault.

c_of_red said:
Instead of piling on code to fix a feature, why not learn tactics?

Thank you. Respect rulez...

c_of_red said:
In this case tactics being ways to isolate a unit from it's support and swamping it to create gaps in the defense that can be exploited.

It can be done and it still will be possible to do. It rather depends on whether you achieve it by gamey tactics or tactics that work in RL.

c_of_red said:
Can't do that when you have units with Majic weapons that can fire an infinite number of times and never run out of ammo.

I do not see why. What majic weapons? What unlimited ammo?
They only thing that would be changed is that the crew will fire at targets that are reasonable to fire at.

c_of_red said:
I neither know nor care what scenario you are discussing. It sounds to me like a good reason to avoid scenarios, which I already do.

Well this is up to you of course. If you wish to ommit the excellent work of Wild Bill, Wulfir, C.B. Blackard it's fine with me. I do not regard it as a good idea though.

Artur.

[Cameronius]

Artur,
Your efforts and persuasiveness are admirable, however I think that the kind of control over opfire you are advocating simply does not exsist in a real battlefeild situation. Even a tank platoon commander has a limited number of decisions that he can make in the span of two minutes. He most likely cannot use the company radio net freely because of radio discipline proceedures. If he can, he still has his tank to command and a different line of sight from the rest of the platoon. If a tank platoon commander has some chance of exercising this control, the company commander and the combat team commander have none. What about units that are out of contact? And MG teams and AT teams that don't even have a radio? How can they get orders to change target priority? How can the combat team commander know that the AT teams are smoke blind when all he is hearing on the net is contacts from tanks. From my experience a typical combat team only has two radio nets. One for the artillery and one for everyone else. In a Canadian combat team under contact the armour units dominate the net and other units can't get a word in edgewise. I assume other countries are the same. Modern burst transmitters can send more messages across the same net in less time but must still be received and understood. Two minutes is not enough time for the CO to make all of these decisions. In reality any commander trains his troops as best he can, lays down standard operating proceedures and goes into battle relying on his troops training and common sense, making only crucial decisions at key times hoping that they filter down in time to make a difference.
Another interesting aspect of this topic is how training and experience will effect a units opfiring. An inexperienced unit can be likely to fire at anything that moves or not fire at anything at all. A more experienced unit will be more selective about their targets but may opt to ignore an order from over the radio bc they know their CO does not have eyes on target and they believe the order to be wrong. I'd rather be alive and court marshalled than buried with the VC.
I for one think that only a small change is required or even none at all.