Friendly Fire Bug?

[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.

[Barkhorn1x]

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 have to disagree up to a point as most modern friendly fire incidents;
1. Happen due to the fluidity of modern combat
2. Communications issues between branches/allied nations compounding same
3. The increase in night battles as that is where Western technolgy has a more pronounced edge
4. Unforms that blend in with the terrain
5. Artillery firing indirectly

- XVIII century warfare was LOS oriented and only point #2 would come into play - and the confusion/smoke/etc. that you mentioned.

Now, given the choice between including friendly fire or not - I would opt for NO if the AI would be impared.

[Sir Beane]

I have to disagree as:

- Most modern friendly fire incidents;
1. Happen due to the fluidity of modern combat
2. Communications issues between branches/allied nations compounding same
3. The increase in night battles as that is where Western technolgy has a more pronounced edge
4. Unforms that blend in with the terrain
5. Artillery firing indirectly

- XVIII century warfare was LOS oriented and only point #2 would come into play

That might be the case with modern warfare, but war today is not the same as war in the 17th century. Not that it really matters, and we seem to be heading very quickly off-topic.

How common are these incidents of A.I friendly fire? I've fought several battles so far and I haven't noticed friendly fire at Brandywine. Lagos is a different story though, in one battle the French seemed determined to 'accidentally' shoot the Admiral's flagship. Which was useful, because up until then I was losing .

[Hollerbach]

I've only played the demo land battle once, but based on the unit stats at the end it looks like both myself and they AI took out around 50 of our own men each with friendly fire. I have no idea when this happened as I didn't see anything obvious during the battle. Since it was my first battle with a new system things felt pretty chaotic and I didn't know what was going on half the time, so it could have been arty, muskets, grenades... But yeah, 50 out of ~800 casualties seems a bit high, especially when I wasn't trying to do this (In MTW1/2, RTW sometimes I'd fire into a melee intentionally if I only had low level troops involved, kinda like the English in Braveheart...)