Improvement proposal I - OP fire draining

Bulletmagnet · #1 February 3rd, 2006, 11:54 PM

Cameronius,

SO what your saying there trooper is that its a good thing the Iraqies didnt have a lot of Bmp's and jeeps at 73East or we would have had alot of dead M1A1's ? Hardly.

Why cant a experience check be added to the firing routine for a unit to check to use the proper mg vs soft or cannon vs hrd targets? At least this the best of both worlds and not too much coding.

Thexder · #2 February 4th, 2006, 06:14 PM

I have to say that I'm with Artur on this one. It's annoying to play against a player that drains the OP-fire with jeeps or cheap APC's. Although most players wont do this (well, maybe they regard it unchivalry) and this can be countered by, for example, reducing the amount of jeeps etc. But the fact that these kind of rules must be made in order to achieve the best possible gaming experience is telling that there's something wrong.

If its achievable within the code, I would gladly accept that one could have the option of setting units to fire only some unit classes ignoring others. This could be combined by some kind of distance option within which the unit would fire anything that moves. These options would greatly improve the use of especially tanks and ATGM's. It would also be nice to use it with infantry that has AT-weapons.

As for being "unrealistic", this is not true. It's only realistic that wellhidden tank doesn't waste the element of surprise to a worthless jeep. Of course, if it's possible in code, some randomness can be added to simulate cracking nerves etc. But all in all the "Commander God" -element of the game is in itself so unrealistic that it's useless to even try to make the game one to one to real life. And the arguments that suggests that current situation is only realistic are, IMHO, pretty weird.

WinSPMBT is a great game and with honest (chivalrous) opponents this problem is much smaller than it is against the opponents whose only goal is to win without any style. But even so the suggestion that Artur made has my support.

Cheers,
Jukka

Artur · #3 February 4th, 2006, 06:37 PM

Man how good it is to read this

. I could not agree more

.
Thanks Thexder!

Artur.

PS: (It has been said before that jeeps do not drain Op fire but the cheap ACs and APCs do...)

Mobhack · #4 February 4th, 2006, 09:29 PM

That is because the game is set up to ignore unarmed unloaded soft vehicles except at ultra short distance, especially if the potential firer is currently undetected by the enemy. A few hexes further if he is known about.

Put an MG on the soft vehicle - it becomes an item of interest, ditto if loaded with passengers.

That has been in the code for over a year(?) now, so the original trick you could play of "teasing out" opfire with cheap unarmed trucks and jeeps is less valid.

The new more sophisticated opfire filter we are testing now looks promising, as does the more sophisticated AI target alocation in the normal AI phase, when it determines what target of those currently available to a unit is best to shoot at.

Cheers
Andy

Artur · #5 February 4th, 2006, 09:44 PM

Andy,

With all respect if you cannot add an interface for the players to decide I suggest not to change the OP fire mechanism. Simply I cannot see how one can define an algorithm valid for even most of the situations. There are cases when it is appropriate to fire even at an unarmed jeep, and sometimes it is appropriate to fire only at the heavies. It always depends on the situation that is why user interaction would be so important...

Artur.

Thexder · #6 February 4th, 2006, 11:59 PM

Artur, thanks for your kind words

But I wouldn't condemn the upgrades just yet even if they don't include interface for the players. I agree it's quite difficult to come up with an algoritm that applies to most cases but these guys seem to be pros and the fact that they're even considering this and trying new things sounds very promising to me. I've read these topics and found out that these guys are very quick to shoot down any proposed improvements that are either unrealistic or unmanagable within the context of the code. This time they're putting a lot of effort to an aspect of game that is one it's biggest weaknessess and hard to improve. At least I'm happy for their efforts and anxious to see the results.

Let's keep our fingers crossed!
And thank you Artur to for bringing this issue into discussion.

Cheers,
Jukka

PDF · #7 July 26th, 2006, 07:23 AM

I'm rather on Artur's side here.
Either the Camo team should claim that they don't think there is any problem with OpFire, but that's a hard stance to keep given than practically there *are* problems in 80% of the OpFire cases we see in SPMBT or SPWW2, else I would be glad to see the team have a more constructive approach than "it requires too much work/AI programming" and so on.

The "target type" ideas here are quite good - in fact that's how it works rather well in Combat Mission or EF/WF series. If the AI can't benefit of it because it's too long/difficult, we would at least solve the problem in pbem as jd38011 pointed out.

Double_Deuce · #8 February 7th, 2006, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Artur said:
With all respect if you cannot add an interface for the players to decide I suggest not to change the OP fire mechanism. Simply I cannot see how one can define an algorithm valid for even most of the situations. There are cases when it is appropriate to fire even at an unarmed jeep, and sometimes it is appropriate to fire only at the heavies. It always depends on the situation that is why user interaction would be so important...

A user inferface would be ideal but I think the majority would not use it (myself included). I would support any enhancement that refines this aspect of the game so long as its not gonna add code that will cause other issues and degrade another part of the game. I just don't wanna see a WinSPMBT 8.3, 5 years down the road, with 3 different Mods and changes still being made. We'll end up with several versions and players getting turned off from Pbem due to the problem of trying to figure out who is playing what version and having to have numerous installs on their PC.

Cameronius · #9 February 7th, 2006, 03:59 AM

Quote:

Bulletmagnet said:
Cameronius,

SO what your saying there trooper is that its a good thing the Iraqies didnt have a lot of Bmp's and jeeps at 73East or we would have had alot of dead M1A1's ? Hardly.

Bulletmagnet,
Where did I say this? What is your point here?

Double_Deuce · #10 February 7th, 2006, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Bulletmagnet said:
SO what your saying there trooper is that its a good thing the Iraqies didnt have a lot of Bmp's and jeeps at 73East or we would have had alot of dead M1A1's ? Hardly.

It is true IF you take it in the context of the game. Virtual soldiers show no fear, and don't hesitate to have their vehicles driven straight into enemy line of fire, even after watching 30 of their comrades destroyed one after the other.

However, what if the iraqi crewman were all suicide bombers and had 100(+) Jeeps/Bmps all loaded with the equivalent of 1000lbs of TNT and rigged to explode on contact with our vehicles? Could have been a different outcome.