Friendly Fire Bug?

[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?

[BeeSting]

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?

To prove the AI friendly fire issue:


Note I ordered my units not to fire or their fire at will was off, so AI casualties are sustained from their own in the rear.

You can already see how depleted the unit in front is just from their own friendly fire. It's no surprise since the rear unit was firing volleys into the backs of its own.

[Hollerbach]

Hmm, doesn't look pretty. I hope this doesn't become a major issue in the full game, it could really be a downer. At least with AI problems in the past (such as the pin-cushion problem where they would just sit and wait until your archers had killed them to a man) could be circumvented by consciously not exploiting them, but it is a bit hard to tell the AI not to shoot itself!