PZIVB AP Use

[Mobhack]

gold spot = priority target. The AI has no knowledge of these, and does not use them, even if playing a scenario where the designer has set them (unless it randomly chose an impact hex which correlated with a priority target, of course!).

It plots all artillery fire missions from scratch - it does not know about 'repeat' missions or shifting fire (there is code in there that should - I added it meself guvnor! - do it - but something else in the spaghetti seems to take priority over that).

Planes, if targeted on some hex will search around for a target. The search zone is quite large. The AI may have plotted that plane 3 turns back, on something else you did (tanks moving on a road nearby say that were in LOS to it), or just simply on a random hex in your deployment area, or as 'road rage' on your road network, or near an objective cluster.

Our AI code, unlike the SP original has no 'magic spotting' abilities, and it has no ability to 'switch' the impact zone right across the map onto a useful spotted target like the original code.

Assuming it has no more valid located targets to unload on:
- It will sometimes fire into a random hex in your deployment zone, since players usually leave their artillery park there
- It will fire on hexes you fired indirect from (smoke puffs), since a human player can do that too, I gave it that ability
- It will beat around enemy or neutral objectives
- It will beat up the road network - either in your rear zone, or on the approach roads on your half of the map
- it will target hexes you fired direct from, or even Z fired from (if you do the 'hill dance' of popping up to fire and retreating back behind the crest - expect some arty presents, if it has some unassigned batteries. Popping smoke grenades is also an 'AI interest' item now - since you did that it must have ben important - so I'll send presents.
- Like a human player, it now knows about dust trails raised by movement in deserts etc

So - do not park arty by roads in your rear zone, or near objective hexes, And if you fire, relocate after a move or 3 of fire as it is healthier. If you pop smoke, clear the zone.

I have plenty of times seen AI air strikes on parts of the map where there was absolutely nobody around - but I usually don't 'shotgun' formations all over the map and concentrate my troops into the deep South/North as a lump, or half a lump North and half south with a few scouts observing the middle etc. (Which can be a pain in MBT if he suddenly unleashes MLRS or several CBU air strikes, or in WW2 when the nasty Nazi unloads 18 odds Nebelwerfers and killed an entire leg company of veteran/elite leg grunts - AARGH! but life is a terminal STD )

Cheers
Andy

[Charles22]

mobhack:

I have never seen anything like that, and there is no AI code which "measures danger" like that.

Wow, that is fantastic, because it's happened on two totally different parts of the map. Both the exact situation, where I have a few platoons of the "very same" tank overlooking a valley. The tanks in both cases had absolutely nothing obstructing them, as I couldn't destroy them. It finally got to the point that I got frustrated and brought some help from other places, but one of them is still ongoing now. This is occuring over at least 3-4 (more like 6 or 7) turns, so it's not like they haven't had time to get re-directed and take another path. Naturally, I can only tell you what it is doing, not why. Now since this seesm to be unbelievable, I will be on watch for it in the future and do a save when I have clearcut evidence, but as my saves stand, only the PZ38 one has any semblance of showing this behavior, and at this point an unbeliever wouldn't be too convinced with what it looks like now, as I have made some "other" adjustments as I said.

Again- they don't do that. However if your unit is now known about then they may be going somewhere else, or an objective nearby has flipped, or they have decided the hex entry cost is too much (with wrecks in it now) and have gone around another route. Or are simply hanging back as there is now a random choice if enemy is known, to close - the original SP 'tin lemming' code simply charged the objectives with anything that could move, regardless. Our AI code has a little subtlety built in.

They may not be doing that, but it looks an awfully lot like it learned from the first tank going down to both fires from those hills: "They destroyed us at the next hex, therefore we shall not approach more closely". I'm not kidding. It's like that engineer thing I mentioned. I haven't played the latest version of winspww2 very much but I have never seen anything like this before. See also the peculiar air strike I mentioned. There was absolutely no reason that should has happened, unless you think that the air strikes are willing to go after something at random, which I have certainly not ever seen, esecially since there was absolutely no way he spotted the units. The only thing I can figure is there's some very rare random code where they learn where a unit is or more likely just some glitch that exposed them but there wasn't any gamewise explanation for.

You will notice one key ingredient to my story of the tansk not going any further though...they both are facing hills with only one kind of tank on them. One hill has "nothing" but PZIVB's, while the other nothing but PZ38t's. So what may be happening, or at least it alwasy was in my prior games, I always had something of a mix on those hills. So while the gang could rely, in this case of the return fire being almost exactly the same, though at somewhat different distances, in the other example he could not, because they can't account for both the distance and the difference in tanks being a consistent pattern. the "only" way i have managed to break these things up at all, apart than some of the help I brought from other places in various forms, was to actually move some of the tanks closer. It's like they accounted for the original fire and it's distance, but when I uncharacteristically moved forward against heavy odds they didn't account for it, though they might fruitlessly return fire. Part of the key also, might be, that I only sent at most 2-3 of the total 10 or so tanks forward and kept all tanks firing. To leave some of them further back firing as well, though fruitless pretty much, might had kept him from accounting for the forward moving fire. Yes, I know, you say that doesn't happen, they don't re-calculate and "know" when that AP will start firing, or that it's effect, in the case of the PZ38's, will climb one more point in damage, therefore endangering them, but it's screwy nonetheless. Certainly nothing I have ever seen before.

Good to see the stories about the filtering as well.

[Charles22]

mobhack:

A top armour hit takes angle into account as well - just like a side armour shot does. So it can generate rather more resistance than you thought at longer ranges - that "2" can get an effective or 6 armour at long range, as the shell will have a bad angle of fall. Topshots are really only good in rather close.

Says Andy, whose A13s were up on top of some hills shooting down at Italian M13/40s at 1000-1200 yards the other week, and getting top hits with 6 resistance for the top hit shots

I'm not sure that makes sense to me (that angles make a difference when a top is hit), but after posting what I did it did occur to me that top hits should be much more rarer from a further distance, so maybe even just given the limited outlook as I am looking at it now, that might had been enough distance to make the hits a lot further from occuring than I commonly see and therefore rendering the impossible HE damaging shots, more possible than I foresee.

[Charles22]

DRG said:

Artillery priority hexes that a human player is issued with at the start of the game ( the number depends on the battle type and the number of FO's he has ) and can place where ever he want.

And the AI doesn't have an arty "cheat" that can see your units. I think everybody who starts playing this game thinks that at least once. We had one guy complain the AI always targeted his units then found out he played large unit games on small maps and the AI couldn't miss where ever it dropped arty but the AI IS programed to pay attention to road junctions and areas behind hills out of sight just like a human player would and it will detect firing events like mortars just like a human player would.

Don

Ohhhh, I wasn't aware you got more pre-strike spots for every spotter. Hmm, I could have swore I saw a set number per the type of battle on that, but perhaps that's on a spotter per battle basis and I didn't realize it.

Still, you haven't EVER seen the AI attack an unknown hex with air forces have you? It's obvious the artillery is random, though of course it didn't used to be in some SP versions. I sometimes marvel at the foolishness of the AI artillery as it may be wasting away half it's artillery on a totally unknown spot where I haven't something even remotely close, but at such a time it has plenty of units it has spotted and doesn't re-direct it's partial guessing game to focus on what it does see. That's not necessarily bad for the game overall, but does look to be flawed thinking. I don't ever concentrate all my artillery on one spot, but I almost always will focus on something that i can see. Somehow, I just can't get my head around the notion of firing on a position where I haven't the faintest idea that something is there or not. Strangely enough, I never use it for smoke either. And to top it all off I almost never run out of arty ammo, though my field-based ones would if I didn't re-supply them.

Yes, I remember back in the old days, especially with SPWAW, where I would put my 88's on hills, usually just 2-4 of them, and right away the enemy arty or air would go right after them, despite their silence to that time.

[Charles22]

mobhack:

Planes, if targeted on some hex will search around for a target. The search zone is quite large. The AI may have plotted that plane 3 turns back, on something else you did (tanks moving on a road nearby say that were in LOS to it), or just simply on a random hex in your deployment area, or as 'road rage' on your road network, or near an objective cluster.

I don't think there was anything within 20 hexes of those five units. They were purposely in a non-eventful area. The idea is to find a woods hex for all five of them, with the ammo boys in the middle adjacent to them, so no movement need take place to resupply. The VAST majority of the games, no kind of retaliation whatsoever bothers them with such placement, even though tell-tale smoke is evident once they get going.

There was just no reason for that strike. The first plane took a slight SW course from a northern entry point, and going strictly by the course I don't think there was a single unit along that path, even within 6 hexes of the path, for the entire map, so obscure was the placement. I cannot recall the number of air attacks after that, but the very next one came from the south in a NW direction. I had the same reaction to both of them, once I saw the planes "Uh oh, there goes my ammo dump and IG's!" It was that obvious what they were out for. Like I said, I have played the game enough to see the arty will pull a rabbit out of a hat every once in a while, but it's also so stupid as to usually not react to four IG's with smoke trails that are very obvious, so it's not much of a gripe for it to luck out, especially since it is obviosuly random a great deal of the time, but the planes, if it hadn't been for that strike, even when they do strike at empty space, it's always apparent to me that something was in the general vicinity that it has spotted before, but that clearly wasn't the case here. Actually, if you had a flyby where the plane aborted, and even on the same turn the next plane did the nuke strike, that would make some sense, but for what appears to me to not be a random aerial strike force, to pinpoint it so clearly with no help is quite a mystery to me.

[Charles22]

mobhack:

- it will target hexes you fired direct from, or even Z fired from (if you do the 'hill dance' of popping up to fire and retreating back behind the crest - expect some arty presents, if it has some unassigned batteries. Popping smoke grenades is also an 'AI interest' item now - since you did that it must have ben important - so I'll send presents.

I have definitely seen that in this game. One of my sole hopes of stemming the Polish blitz is to use my 37mm SPAA's is the shoot and scoot role using the back hex of a hill and behind the hill again. Yes, some arty decided to try to do something about that.