Odd AI Behavior

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by PopskiPPA

A 30° angle (towards enemy) adds 2 to the front armor of 14 and doubles the side armor from 5 to 10. Side hits come in at an angle of 60° and should ricochet very often, as you experienced (just like me).

I would (and I do in the game) angle my tank and pray that the auto pivot does not kick in, especially when the range is such that the enemy round is just barely able to penetrate the armor. On the other hand I'm praying for my opponent to present the full front, which is the stupidest thing to do for that crew.

The shot coming from marginal penetration range is what makes the angling work for the tanks I'm using. If the ranges is too close or the enemy's gun is so big it doesn't matter, the angle isn't going to help and in reality would hurt. In reality, an angled tank presents a larger visible target to be hit and should be hit more often. A 0 degree angle presents the smallest possible target to the firing unit.

The probability of a side hit should be very small compared to a frontal hit as there is only a little bit of the side visible, so I'm taking the chance (and counting on ricochets). I hope the game takes this into account when determining if it's a front hit or a side hit.

Hit probability on the side is going to depend on the angle you set. With the Pzkw IIIe tanks I tested, assuming 0 degree armor sloping (not sure what it really is), a 45 degree angle to target should be best as it will create a ballistic armor balance between the side and the front since both are 3. In that case, the side should be hit more often than the front simply because there is more side to a tank than front.

As far where hits actually landed, I didn't get into those kind of details when I ran my test. I set the range and angle of the target and fired. Tracked were if the shots deflected or penetrated. On the angled tank, I didn't check to see where the deflected shots actually hit (front or side, turret or hull). Also, I didn't check to see how many shots missed as that can be influenced by the gun firing and the crew experience. It would be possible to check to see if an angled tank gets hit more often, but that was more than I was looking to see. In the case of the Pzkw IIIe, even if shots hit twice as often, it still would have had a better survival rate than taking shots straight on. That's just this one tank, however. It will vary with different tanks as will the optimum angle. That's where it becomes a programming nightmare to figure out and I wouldn't bother with it.

One thing that did seem to occur and this may be more perception than reality was, during a firing sequence, kills seemed to be more frequent after a damage penetrating hit occurred. In reality, if a tank is penetrated, the overall armor integrity would be compromised. Armor fractures, weakening it. If it's welded as opposed to cast, seams break. A kill would be more likely on subsequent hits. I didn't track it, however. It just seemed that way and I don't know if that aspect is incorporated into the game. If it's not, I'm not asking for it. It was just my perception.

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by DRG

Do you have a save of this game made at least 3 turns earlier ?. Even one made near the start would be helpful

Don

Sorry, no

I didn't even realise I had the one I sent. It was just something I stumbled across.

I do have another assault getting ready to start so what I'll do is save the game at the start and turn by turn, just in case something useful comes up. If the AI acts as it has been, it should move units out before I get to the objectives. Also, I used my full complement of support points this time, so the I should expect to see the minefield belt be complete from the top to bottom of the map. That way, if the AI units do move out, they should cross the minefield to get to me.

[DRG]

No worries. I don't think I'll need them now.

Don

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by gila

Would any tank crew under fire have time to adjust to optimum angle?I think panic and self preservation would be the first reaction(knowing the 2nd or 3rd could be a kill shot) and they would quick move to frontal position, and pray!

That's where training comes into play. Under pressure, trained troops will generally react instinctively to their training, suppressing self presevation. Generally militia units tended to run when trained units would hold fast when faced with the same risks.

As for angling Tigers when engaging the enemy, I had heard that before. That's why I started looking at it in the game since I knew it did take into account engagement angles when calculating armor penetration.

[DRG]

What you are seeing is the normal reaction turns build into the game for all battle types kicking in. It's simple enough to see, just set up a normal battle. Set player 1 to all computer and set player two ( the AI ) to all computer except deploy and set that to human. Press continue then autodeploy and click on the HQ button

Click on each formation and take a look at the "reaction turn" That's the turn they will react. In most cases how they react will be OK within the game setting up counterattacks that keep people on their toes but occasionally it won't and your save showed the perfect "it won't"

Andy and I will discuss how this is handled.

Don

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by DRG

What you are seeing is the normal reaction turns build into the game for all battle types kicking in. It's simple enough to see, just set up a normal battle. Set player 1 to all computer and set player two ( the AI ) to all computer except deploy and set that to human. Press continue then autodeploy and click on the HQ button

Click on each formation and take a look at the "reaction turn" That's the turn they will react. In most cases how they react will be OK within the game setting up counterattacks that keep people on their toes but occasionally it won't and your save showed the perfect "it won't"

Andy and I will discuss how this is handled.

Don

One if these threads I did mention where the reaction threw a monkey wrench into my plans, so it wouldn't be good to eliminate it.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by RERomine

Since it seems to be coming up, I figured I would start a thread on AI actions that seem out of the ordinary or illogical:

1. Running into their own minefields, before visible contact established between opposing sides.

2. Dashing West out of prepared positions during a defend, before victory point hexes have been captured. The time this happened, my units had been spotted and engaged, but the AI units were actually heading away from those units. I was in the enemy rear at the time and do have a nice screen print of this.

3. AI dropping artillery 9 hexes in front of my LD before I have even moved on turn 1. Impossible for me to be there yet.

4. Auto pivot to face frontal armor toward firing unit. I understand what the intent was here, but this gets more tanks killed than anything. Normally, the firing unit is off at an angle to the target and this angle creates an artificial armor slope which the code takes into account when determine shot effectiveness. That artificial slope causes shots to deflect the vast proportion of the time. I know often I won't get a kill on a target at an angle when firing a gun marginally capable of killing the target. I just keep firing until the pivot and then the kill comes. When I fire, I always angle my armor off full frontal so that I get benefit from that when the target fires back, if it doesn't die. I have to re-angle my tank after each responding shot. It renders British 2pdrs very ineffective except at very close range.

1) No idea - never seen that one, since if the defender it will generally be stationary. If 2 below - then it might decide the quickest path is via the mines, if there are no nearby gaps, of course.

2) The AI will sometimes do a mini counter attack even before you have taken any objectives. Usually with armour, but sometimes not. This should be quite rare - in 2 recent WW2 long campaigns the defenders have come at me maybe twice with a tank platoon before I was near the objectives. (Being near the objectives if spotted by the AI can sometimes trigger counter attacks too, though generally you need to flip one or more).

3) If you mean dropping arty ahead of your deployment zone, it will sometimes aim at the front of the deployment line and then there is the usual spread of fires which may take the aim point off and away into the neutral zone. But fires landing ahead of your deployment zone can drop on the next turn as well thus splatting your advancing troops from turn 1 if you decided to risk running into the shelled zone. And if heavy arty, then it can crater approach roads in front of your advance which also may slow your approach down.

4) Before that was introduced stugs, marders etc were simply dead meat if engaged from a flank as only turrets would turn to engage. It also solved problems with Char Bs and Lee/Grants which would almost never use the hull guns, simply engaging with the sub-turret unless a human player manually hull-turned them - which the AI rarely did.

Cheers
Andy

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

1) No idea - never seen that one, since if the defender it will generally be stationary. If 2 below - then it might decide the quickest path is via the mines, if there are no nearby gaps, of course.

Seems like an reconnaissance probe. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. In the case where they hit the minefield, the units were East of it before they started and there were no gaps.

2) The AI will sometimes do a mini counter attack even before you have taken any objectives. Usually with armour, but sometimes not. This should be quite rare - in 2 recent WW2 long campaigns the defenders have come at me maybe twice with a tank platoon before I was near the objectives. (Being near the objectives if spotted by the AI can sometimes trigger counter attacks too, though generally you need to flip one or more).

Except in my case, the AI didn't run to the sound of the guns. At the end of the battle, it had possession of my deployment zone, but I didn't have anything back there. My entire force was in AI deployment zone.

3) If you mean dropping arty ahead of your deployment zone, it will sometimes aim at the front of the deployment line and then there is the usual spread of fires which may take the aim point off and away into the neutral zone. But fires landing ahead of your deployment zone can drop on the next turn as well thus splatting your advancing troops from turn 1 if you decided to risk running into the shelled zone. And if heavy arty, then it can crater approach roads in front of your advance which also may slow your approach down.

Desert battle in this case, without roads. I've seen the AI hammer roads before so I don't deploy on them. The fire came in too far ahead of my deployment zone to be a risk to anything and I definitely wasn't going to go through the impact zone with artillery still coming in. If I'm receiving incoming mail, I get out of the impact zone and if I have to go where it is coming in, I wait. I suspect this is true for most people. The only exception to this would probably be the last turn or two of the battle and the impact zone is on victory hexes not controlled by the player.

4) Before that was introduced stugs, marders etc were simply dead meat if engaged from a flank as only turrets would turn to engage. It also solved problems with Char Bs and Lee/Grants which would almost never use the hull guns, simply engaging with the sub-turret unless a human player manually hull-turned them - which the AI rarely did.

Cheers
Andy

For fixed or sponson mounted guns, it makes sense. They are going to turn to fire. For other units, auto pivot's usefulness varies from tank to tank. Some it helps, some it doesn't.

Coding for each situation is not something that I'd want to tackle. You would have to run a numeric calculation for each unit to determine the optimum angle each time it ends it's turn or receives fire. Can't do it by unit name because names can be changed. Since armor values also can change, it would have to be a run-time calculation unless you calculated it in advance and maintained the values in a table. Then you have to consider multiple threats to the tank. With a 50mm L42 to the right 30 degrees off at 16 hexes and a 50mm L60 to the left at 20 degrees, 22 hexes off, which is the bigger threat? Has one of the guns been suppressed and really isn't a threat? Could it possibly recover and become a threat before the next turn starts? You see where all of that goes. Coding it would be a project in and of itself.

Auto pivot at worst puts the player and AI on the same playing field. If the player chooses to angle a unit before firing or at the end of their turn to optimize armor, that gives them a leg up on the AI. No reason to complain there. When I first brought it up, I saw the advantages to manually setting tank angles. As Don pointed out, it was based on my experience. When I get to Tigers and Panthers rather than various versions of the mark IIIs, I'll worry less about tank angles. Things are fine the way they are

[Mobhack]

Except in my case, the AI didn't run to the sound of the guns. At the end of the battle, it had possession of my deployment zone, but I didn't have anything back there. My entire force was in AI deployment zone.

Counter attackers should head off towards any flipped V-hexes eventually in order to retake them. Or, go for nearby located enemy. This results in AI units appearing up your rear, as has happened to me on woods maps with T34s appearing up the kilt of my assault group..

They will go deeper into your rear while those conditions are not met. Sometimes that will result in a force running over your artillery park.

However if the AI counter-attackers never saw anyone nearby (e.g. visibility is way low) it wont have something to attack, and if you only flipped over the V hexes right near the end of the battle then it may not have time to go back from its rear-area mission and attempt to retake them.

Cheers
Andy

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

Counter attackers should head off towards any flipped V-hexes eventually in order to retake them. Or, go for nearby located enemy. This results in AI units appearing up your rear, as has happened to me on woods maps with T34s appearing up the kilt of my assault group..

They will go deeper into your rear while those conditions are not met. Sometimes that will result in a force running over your artillery park.

However if the AI counter-attackers never saw anyone nearby (e.g. visibility is way low) it wont have something to attack, and if you only flipped over the V hexes right near the end of the battle then it may not have time to go back from its rear-area mission and attempt to retake them.

Cheers
Andy

You pretty much described the situation. I had not flipped any victory hexes at the time, visibility was low (9) and the units that ended up in my deployment area did not have eyes on any of my units. My scouts had eyes on the objectives and the units that moved out allowing me observe what was occurring. When the AI units got to my deployment area, I'm sure they were pretty lonely. There was nothing back there but the enemy