Improvement proposal I - OP fire draining

[Pepper]

DRG said:
We are looking into the issue and are running experiments with some ideas of our own that would let opfire remain automatic but would more efficiently assign opfire based on unit capability. The result, if experiements pan out, will mean game play will not change but when in the opfire phase the units that return fire will be more selective that before

Don

This is great news! If it works it may put an end to a very annoying exploit. Of course, on the other hand, it may simply birth new forms of exploits to take advantage of an imperfect AI .... but hey - thats always a risk, right?

[narwan]

Hi, good news indeed from Don cáuse I was going to reply with something similar myself. Artur, sofar you've been focusing on categorising the targets, but wouldn't it be easier to categorize the units doing the OP fire?
What I'm thinking is adding a variable determining the order in which units take their fire. If a jeep appears, the mg's shoud open fire first. If they miss, then the IFV's open fire, if the jeep still lives the tanks open up, if the jeep still lives the AT units open fire. Note that this is all in one OP fire instant. In other words the first hex the jeep is targeted. If the jeep still lives to enter a second hex the whole cycle starts anew.
There would be no addition to the user interface, the player has no extra selection to do. What would be needed is mechanism to determine the order in which units of certain categories open fire at certain types of targets. That could be something like combining both the ratio and the absolute difference between HE kill capacity and AP kill capacity of a unit. The bigger the difference in favor of HE, the higher on the fire priority list vs unarmored targets (and lower vs armored targets), the bigger the difference in favor of AP the lower on the list vs unarmored targets (and higher vs armored targets). Something like that.
You could also add special restrictions on dedicated units like AT and AA (preventing SP ATGM's from firing with mg's on a jeep and wasting their one shot with the missiles for example). You could also make it depended on a unit skill roll to see if they keep their proper place in the firing order.

I'm just 'brainfarting' here btw, spewing ideas that may or may not be of use.

Narwan