When Does the AI Give Up???

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

I have never seen the AI reinforcements in hundreds of battles in reduced visibility unless I had eyes-on to the enemy arrival, so you either had someone over there (including air strikes), or there was a bug, or you are mixing up the review map at end-game (when all enemy are visible). Do you have a save from well before they arrived?.

Andy

What about just seeing units that are beyond the visibility range? I have another game going and just saw a mortar at a distance of about 22 hexes. Visibility is 9, but it's sitting on a hill, proud as can be. None of my units have been any closer than 22 hexes. Not sure it's even fired yet because it's oriented straight ahead. No smoke plume over the hex. I do know there is a location that did take mortar fire 38 hexes directly in front of it. It was a lovely sight to see British mortar fire pounding their own entrenchments. Warms the heart, it does

I do have a save file on this one.

[narwan]

Arty units that are firing indirectly can become spotted by themselves when they've been firing for a bit.
Think of it like this; your spotters see some smoke or flashes (also represented by the smoke) in the distance at a certain spot. A bit later mortar rounds fall. It doesn't take them long to notice that everytime they see the flashes at that direction a bit later those mortar rounds land. Some smart guy figures out they're 81mm's and by the time difference between the flashes nad the arrival he figures out the distance. Presto, 'spotted' arty unit on the screen.

Narwan

[chuckfourth]

Hi Narwan
RERomine is talking about artillery units appearing beyond the visibility range, so when you say

Originally Posted by narwan

your spotters see some smoke or flashes (also represented by the smoke) in the distance at a certain spot.

Your spotters cant -see- any smoke or flashes. The appearance of your rear area artillery to the opponent is a bug. or in any case unrealistic. The same goes for smoke. In-game you can -see- the smoke from a 50mm mortar 10 kilometres away even if theres a mountain between it and you and your deep in a forest with a LOS of 1 hex. Your abandoned trenches also appear to the enemy after a while. This is a problem if you have a large infantry force that has a long march ahead of it and the enemy has artillery.
Best Regards Chuck.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by chuckfourth

Hi Narwan
RERomine is talking about artillery units appearing beyond the visibility range, so when you say

Your spotters cant -see- any smoke or flashes. The appearance of your rear area artillery to the opponent is a bug. or in any case unrealistic. The same goes for smoke. In-game you can -see- the smoke from a 50mm mortar 10 kilometres away even if theres a mountain between it and you and your deep in a forest with a LOS of 1 hex. Your abandoned trenches also appear to the enemy after a while. This is a problem if you have a large infantry force that has a long march ahead of it and the enemy has artillery.
Best Regards Chuck.

No Chuckie - Narwan is of course quite correct, and you are showing your usual lack of a clue.

And of course you know it is not a "bug" since the spotting of on-map arty has been discussed many times in these forums and the previous Yahoo discussion groups.

Andy

[RERomine]

It actually seems rational that the locations of units could be pin pointed without being able to visibly see them. The visibility conditions would be a factor as to how this occurs. WinSPWW2 provides visibility in hexes, but not what conditions cause limit the visibility.

That being said, conditions could be assumed to be just levels of light and darkness rather than dust storms, rain, snow storms, etc. On a dark night, it would be possible to pin point the location of a unit beyond normal visibility ranges based on muzzle flashes. Muzzle blasts realistically kick up more dust than they generate smoke, but who's to say what the cloud over a firing unit actually is?

The reason I brought it up in the first place was it wasn't clear if the mortar had fired at all since when I saw it there was no smoke and it was oriented straight ahead. I did have units the could have seen the location if the visibility had been higher than 9. More than likely, the mortar had fired and enough time had passed and the smoke dissipated. I had mentioned a location directly ahead of the mortar had been hit earlier in the battle. At the time, I was more enjoying the fact the mortar was hitting their own men than trying to figure out where the fire was coming from.

As for being a bug, Andy indicates it's not. By definition, a bug is code that isn't working as intended and this evidently it is working just fine. I'm content with that. It may not work how everyone would like it to work, but as long as it works properly, that's cool. Being a game programmer is like being a politician; you aren't going to make everyone happy.

[chuckfourth]

Hi Andy
Quite the reverse Im sure,
Ok there is a small chance you can identify a particular piece of on-board artillery if you string together a large number of unlikely 'ifs' and its a mortar and its close but unlike what Narwan says it has to be within your LOS. But this only happens rarely so wether bug or bug masquerading as feature not such a big deal.
But
To illustrate my point about smoke, Japs fighting Brits in Malaysa, entire board is Jungle, -Nobody- can see more than three of so hex's. Nevertheless as soon as the enemies onboard artillery opens up you can see each and every artillery piece's smoke signature and then allocate air or counterbatterie to take it out, hardly realistic methinks.
In the vast majority of cases on-board artilery smoke signatures wouldnt be visible, but they all always are, why?
When I brought up this subject previously it's been ignored rather than dicussed, other than that I cant recall it ever being a topic of discussion.
But Id be most happy to read these discussions you mention any chance of a link?
Best Regards Chuck.

[DRG]

We've been down this round before. You're "ignored" Chuck because neither Andy nor I have the least bit of interest in arguing on and on and on and on about a topic because you absolutely cannot grasp that whatever idea you have for the game shouldn't be accepted for implementation or, at the very least. discussed to death.

One of the interesting things about SP is the number of people who profess to enjoy it but have a long list of things they want changed to make it "better". If all the changes were made it wouldn't be SP and most of the reason people have for liking it would disappear. Keep in mind that far more people play this game and are happy with it than the few who constantly find fault with it for one reason or the other. Yeah..... I know....... you love the game but just want to make it "better".

Off map arty gives no smoke signature but once it's fired the game will begin the process of counter battery against those units and IF you or the AI has arty with equal or greater range and the gun crews moral and experience are good enough you will get CB sometime a few turns in the future. It's not 100% predictable when you will get CB and we like it that way. Some don't and want fuller control. But it's not going to change

On map units are CB'd by their smoke signature. This gives both the AI and a human player an equal chance at dealing with them. Is it gamey ? Sure. Is the entire GAME gamey ? Of course. It's a GAME. Real life commanders DO NOT have a "God View" of the battlefield" . SP DOES have a "God View" of the battlefield and that is at the very core of it's being and isn't going to change. If we didn't allow the smoke signatures there would be no way to counter on map arty for the AI or the human player. We could key the AI to the firing event similar to the off map arty but that would leave the human player with nothing.

So no, it's not going to change any more than the smoke kicked up by artillery is going to be eliminated either as the same argument could be made that this shouldn't been seen at the other end of the map either.

End of discussion

Don

[RERomine]

The "God's view" pretty much sums it up. If you forget about the smoke/artillery aspect of things for a bit, units several clicks from contact with the enemy still "know" exactly where they are as long as other friendly units have contact. Doesn't matter if they are buried deep in the jungle are not. Every unit effectively has very detailed topographic maps, with GPS tracking systems. This allows units not in contact with the enemy to effectively maneuver against those enemy units as long as other friendly units can see them.

For game purposes, radios only relate to rallying suppression. Yes, radios could be used to direct and control maneuvers, but in the game not all units have radios. That still doesn't stop the player from maneuvering against "known" enemy positions. Maps, well for units lucky enough to have them wouldn't be anywhere near the detail of what we have today.

Smoke as displayed by the game, I consider more of a combination of things rather than just "smoke". Some of these things exist for only a fraction of a second. Others endure for a longer period of time. Muzzle flash is one. Anyone ever seen a big gun fire at night? It lights up the whole country side. It's not hard to figure out where the firing unit is there. How about the sound of the gun firing? That can be heard a considerable distance also, assuming it's not lost in the din of the ongoing battle. Assuming several units could hear the enemy gun/mortar firing, triangulation would give you a fair idea where the firing unit is located. Enough for a firing solution? Maybe, maybe not. And there is the smoke and dust that I've mentioned before in this thread.

As pointed out, it is a game. Expecting perfect realism out of it is unrealistic. There are lots of unrealistic aspects in the game. There is the afore mentioned integrated unit GPS aspect. Here's another. A rifle squad and a marksman are in the same hex, firing the same type of weapon at the same target, yet we can tell that the marksman is not just another member of the squad. How about a squad riding a tank that gets peppered by a machine gun and doesn't get automatically cut down to half strength? Anyone see "Saving Private Ryan" when they were swarming on the immobilized Tiger when the 20mm Flak gun opened up? I know it was just a movie, but that's about what would happen. I'm sure there are more things, but I think my point is made. Why dwell on one aspect of the game that isn't completely realistic when there are others equally unrealistic?

The point of all this is that the game is not going to be perfectly realistic. It's not going to happen. Not with something this complex. Personally, I believe this is an outstanding game. The more important question, "Is the game playable?" Yes!!! Very much so. I have mentioned things that I felt have put either the AI or player at a disadvantage. It is more important that the playing field is level rather than whether or not mortar in a jungle actually creates smoke. Since the same mortar would create smoke for the player and AI alike, the playing field is level in that aspect.

[DRG]

`



Also keep in mind there are newbie's who play this game that get flayed alive by the AI and there are veteran players who consider the AI a waste of time to play.

How do we keep both types of players happy ? Preferences for one but we have seen players adjust their preferences then scream there is a "bug" in the game because they jacked up the preference for one side and down for the other switched sides and didn't understand why things were screwed up and we have advised players to adjust the preferences if they don't think the stock settings suit their game play then they argue that what they think is right should be the correct settings totally ignoring the point I made in the first paragraph.

I used to have a copy of an excellent essay on the problems of making a game both realistic AND playable and how, in the end, there was really no way of making the realism crowd and the playability crowd totally happy with the same game. Unfortunately I lost it years ago in a HD crash. No matter how much you back up something is always overlooked




Don

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by DRG

`

Also keep in mind there are newbie's who play this game that get flayed alive by the AI and there are veteran players who consider the AI a waste of time to play.

I suspect that's pretty much the same with all games. Until you get a handle on things, the AI usually will lunch on players. I played one game, a bowling game, that I figured out after about an hour of play. After I got 80+ strikes in a row, I stopped playing and haven't played again, but games like that are exceptions. It usually take time to figure out how to a game effectively.

The various ways to set difficulty with the SP games is another nice aspect. There are countless combinations a player can set them at. Other games, difficulty is usually handled two ways: AI forces are numerically increased (or decreased) or the AI gets unspecified advantages (or disadvantages). The ability to play people, either hot seat or PBEM is another aspect that enhances the game's desirability.

How do we keep both types of players happy ? Preferences for one but we have seen players adjust their preferences then scream there is a "bug" in the game because they jacked up the preference for one side and down for the other switched sides and didn't understand why things were screwed up and we have advised players to adjust the preferences if they don't think the stock settings suit their game play then they argue that what they think is right should be the correct settings totally ignoring the point I made in the first paragraph.

The simple fact is you can't keep everyone happy, so I wouldn't bother trying. I don't think I'm wrong when I say the vast majority of people who play the WinSP games are satisfied. Preferring something be a certain way isn't the same thing as a bug and not all bugs are worth fixing. We deal with that at work and we also deal with users thinking there are bugs when they just don't understand the application. Comes with the territory.

I used to have a copy of an excellent essay on the problems of making a game both realistic AND playable and how, in the end, there was really no way of making the realism crowd and the playability crowd totally happy with the same game. Unfortunately I lost it years ago in a HD crash. No matter how much you back up something is always overlooked

Don

As long as the final product does what you intended, you are good. You might run into situations you wish you had handled differently or functionality you wish you had included the first time around, but that's normal. With SP, it's a great game if it is accepted for what it is instead of what someone else wants it to be.