Friendly Fire Bug?

[Martok]

What Monk said.


Friendly fire has always been a feature of TW battles: If a unit is standing too close to a friendly missile unit (*especially* when it's front of the missile unit), it will take casualties.

[SpencerH]

You'd think they would've/could've fixed this by now!

[Vuk]

It is not a bug. It has happened in real life. A commander needs to be careful. If it seems ridiculous, that is just because the player is being ridiculously careless in his placement of units and his orders thereto.

[SpencerH]

You're right it isnt a "bug". Its bad programming that was eliminated to a large degree with viking invasion but re-emerged in RTW. One unit firing point blank into the back of the unit in front of them is ridiculous and totally unreal.

[Beskar]

That's what you would think, but look at recent modern day wars, for example. It happens.

[Sir Beane]

You're right it isnt a "bug". Its bad programming that was eliminated to a large degree with viking invasion but re-emerged in RTW. One unit firing point blank into the back of the unit in front of them is ridiculous and totally unreal.

It's annoying but it isn't unrealistic. Friendly fire incidents happen frequently in combat, even in modern warfare. Poorly trained or nervous soldiers might easily make mistakes such as firing too close to a friendly unit. If you wish to avoid it then it's a matter of organising your army properly. I would rather have friendly fire than have units refuse to fire near a friendly/ have their bullets just pass straight through.

If you don't want your men shot in the back then don't stand them in front of guns, its as simple as that.

[A Very Super Market]

Cute fuzzy slingers. Always killing my FMs.

Keep in mind that muskets are ridiculously innacurate anyways.

[SpencerH]

It's annoying but it isn't unrealistic. Friendly fire incidents happen frequently in combat, even in modern warfare. Poorly trained or nervous soldiers might easily make mistakes such as firing too close to a friendly unit. If you wish to avoid it then it's a matter of organising your army properly. I would rather have friendly fire than have units refuse to fire near a friendly/ have their bullets just pass straight through.

If you don't want your men shot in the back then don't stand them in front of guns, its as simple as that.

Friendly fire incidents do happen. I know, I was fired upon by fellow members of my own platoon so I think I have a better viewpoint on the subject than most others here. Most incidents of "friendly fire" are due to artillery or aircraft ground attack but despite your strawman, thats not what we are discussing. Incidents of short range "friendly fire" occur because of confusion. Its easy to mistake who's who in the dark or in heavy cover and sometimes the rapidity of movement on the modern battlefield cause errors. OTOH, its totally unrealistic to have a unit armed with a musket or bow, standing in an open field, fire point blank into the back of the unit in front of it.

[Barkhorn1x]

OTOH, its totally unrealistic to have a unit armed with a musket or bow, standing in an open field, fire point blank into the back of the unit in front of it.

I agree here.

[Sol Invictus]

Friendly fire incidents do happen. I know, I was fired upon by fellow members of my own platoon so I think I have a better viewpoint on the subject than most others here. Most incidents of "friendly fire" are due to artillery or aircraft ground attack but despite your strawman, thats not what we are discussing. Incidents of short range "friendly fire" occur because of confusion. Its easy to mistake who's who in the dark or in heavy cover and sometimes the rapidity of movement on the modern battlefield cause errors. OTOH, its totally unrealistic to have a unit armed with a musket or bow, standing in an open field, fire point blank into the back of the unit in front of it.

Agreed. I was an Artilleryman many years ago and it was a very great concern when firing indirectly. Musket era units firing into the backs of their comrades is a very different situation. Like was posted earlier, it is an annowance for the Player to avoid, but the AI could be crippled by this.

[Sir Beane]

Friendly fire incidents do happen. I know, I was fired upon by fellow members of my own platoon so I think I have a better viewpoint on the subject than most others here. Most incidents of "friendly fire" are due to artillery or aircraft ground attack but despite your strawman, thats not what we are discussing. Incidents of short range "friendly fire" occur because of confusion. Its easy to mistake who's who in the dark or in heavy cover and sometimes the rapidity of movement on the modern battlefield cause errors. OTOH, its totally unrealistic to have a unit armed with a musket or bow, standing in an open field, fire point blank into the back of the unit in front of it.

I respectfully disagree. In modern times it is unlikely a group of trained soldiers would fire into a friendly group and even now it still happens.

I agree that experienced or elite units would be unlikely to make this mistake. Militia, conscripts and other poorly trained infantry might very well, under the stress of battle, fire in way that caused damage to a friendly group. They might be standing in an open field, but that open field would be filled with the sound of cannon fire, explosions and in pitched battles visibility could be severely impaired by smoke. Add to this the fact that muskets are innacurate and unreliable compared to modern weaponry, and that 18th century troops recieved very little training in accuracy.

If a group of untrained, nervous men in the heat of battle recieved an order to fire then many would probably do so, even if friendly units were in the way.

I do however agree that if the A.I is doing this regularly it is a problem. Occasionally because of poor planning or bad orders is fine. Frequently due to stupidity is not however. Friendly fire in itself is not a bug, but the fact that the A.I does it frequently might be.

[BeeSting]

You're right it isnt a "bug". Its bad programming that was eliminated to a large degree with viking invasion but re-emerged in RTW. One unit firing point blank into the back of the unit in front of them is ridiculous and totally unreal.

Yeah. A bad programming is how it should really be defined... not a bug.

[ljperreira]

tell that to the american army

Oh, here we go, knocking the U.S. and its military again....im pretty doggone sure that the U.S. Army is not the only one experiencing friendly fire. It happens all the time, in every war, by every nation....its just the nature of the beast.

[Fisherking]

Friendly fire has always been something of a problem in the TW games, but it has also been a fact of life on the battle field.

There should be some sort of check to see if friendly units are in the line of fire but this is a double edges sword. You may be able to fire over their heads. Without some kind of system that tells friend from foe and checks line of sight/line of fire you won’t fix it. Even with that it will not eliminate accidents, nor should it actually.

I agree that cannon should not select targets through your line units, but can they tell the units are in the line of fire.

It may be best to individually target your cannon when placed among troops. It is easy to let them select targets but not always wise. Troops have been killed by friendly fire as long as there have been projectiles.

The programming aspects of the problem are not that easy to fix. It means that each unit must be aware of its coordinate, the coordinate of every other unit and distinguish whether it is friend or foe. It is a 3d coordinate with a height range. Units have to be able to sense if a part of the target is occluded by friendly units within their arc of fire. The cone of fire also play a part (some rounds will be lower or higher). If it doesn’t work perfectly the unintended consequence is that your long range units won’t fire over the heads of your troops from a hill top.

Obviously there is some aspects to the problem they have not solved. It had occurred in each game and if it were that straight forward it would have been eliminated in STW.

It just might be a little difficult to program each unit in the game to be as humanly aware of benefits and consequences as the player is.

[Strategy]

There should be some sort of check to see if friendly units are in the line of fire but this is a double edges sword. You may be able to fire over their heads.

It wouldn't be a problem if the AI understood geography, which unfortunately it doesn't seem to do.

The problem is not friendly-fire as such; but rather the instances when the AI automatically does something blatantly stupid that it has not been given orders to do. Such as unlimber and immediately unloads cannister through its neighbouring artillery unit (happened to me again when I experimented with the game yesterday) firing at god knows what (there wasn't any enemy unit within range).

Personally, I don't think this should be that hard to fix. All it needs is a sensible heuristic - such as, for instance, taking the decision to auto-target fire based upon the (effective distance of the enemy from your unit - number of friendly units in line of fire).

Personally, I would rather have the cannons require me to manually target enemy units to force overhead fire than having to do what I do now - manually target every single unit the cannons fire at (and having to turn off fire at will every time I unlimber a battery).

But that's primarily an irritation (and one that could be fixed if they'd just make the fire at will setting persistent on artillery units). The bigger problem is that the AI - 1. will be exploited (even if you don't want to exploit it, you can't prevent it from unloading on its own units), and 2. sets up artillery in poor positions given the terrain (though one pro - it does seem to seek high ground).

Obviously there is some aspects to the problem they have not solved. It had occurred in each game and if it were that straight forward it would have been eliminated in STW.

Obviously. I code AI myself - I have a healthy respect for the difficulties involved in getting a game AI to do ANYTHING sensible.

But it's rather unfortunate that they haven't fixed this aspect in a game where 95% of the units are missile units.


Regarding infantry firing into the back of units in front of them, though, I have to say that I have not noticed this happening to any devastating effect (I have seen it happen, but the front line didn't appear to suffer any significant damage from it). What I have seen is that if a firing line at the back overlaps the firing line in the front, then the infantry who have a line of sight to the enemy on the flanks will open fire (while the rest of the line won't). Perhaps what people are seeing is that as gaps are opened in the foremost firing line (by casaulties, etc.), the rear firing line is opening fire through those gaps?

[Major Robert Dump]

You'd think they would've/could've fixed this by now!

nevermind

[Arasaka]

If you overlap your units then be prepared for friendly-fire casualties.

You really need to micromanage your units. If you select a few units and right-click on an enemy, they will bunch up and start shooting each other. You have to keep them in formation, or redeploy.

The same happens if you have untis in a line formation. the ones in the rear will shoot the unit in front of them, not the enemy unit beyond the friendly one in front. More micomanaging the "Fire at Will" button. I always forget to turn it back on again, especially since I'm trying to manage 20 units involved in 2 or 3 different skirmishes at the same time.

[ArtillerySmoke]

I am getting the game today (Yesterday turned into a nightmare day for me...had no time to pick the game up) but from what I'm reading here, this looks like another really minor bug being blown out of proportion.

I'll certainly see tonight though...

[Fisherking]

I can live with keeping an eye on units in the line of fire. That is not so bad.

I just hope the friendly artillery is not targeting it’s sister batteries…that would be a bigie.