LOS frustation & other bugs playing germans - Storm in the East Tournament - Round 1

[KeBrAnTo]

Hi all,

I don't know if any of you playing the german side of the first battle of this tournament is having the same issues I've been suffering since the beginning of the battle, that's why I'm feeling kind of frustrated with the scenario, the game, or everything at the same time.

First and more important issue so far is being the LOS issue and spotting for all my armor and vehicles.

I've spent with different panzers literally complete turns, more turns, and even more turns, changing to another spot, changing again to another, having in all positions I tried LOS (blue line) and Hull-Down position, tried all kind of armor cover arcs to see if this could help over different enemy T-34's, but my tank commanders, buttoned or not, could see absolutely nothing till they got destroyed.

Eventually, target enemy armors seems to, all of a sudden and without any action done by my armor unit that might uncover its position, acquire target over my panzers and start shooting at them, and even then, my tank commanders did not spot the enemy tanks !!!!
That happened to me in all tank encounters so far but once, that worked the other way around.

Second issue is crossing bridges.

I tried to cross the bridge on the far right end of the map (German POV), and as soon as my infantry started crossing the bridge, some soldiers in a couple of squads started running the opposite way, without any apparent reason.
From that point on, those squads were done, as they were not attending the orders any further, as the "deserting" soldiers retained the "focus" of the whole squad, so all the orders were plotted over the deserters but not acknowledged by anyone. It's crazy, I know ...

Third is artillery requests using the 88mm off-map mortars.

Well, what I could say about this particular one, no matter what LOS I have to the target, how close or far to it, how experienced is the officer requesting the artillery support as I tried few, ALL, I mean, ALL the rounds are fired out of the bounds of the scenario.

I must say my opponent is playing pretty well IMHO too, but now the battle situation is totally against me now because I've been losing tanks on the situation described above, where - I'm not saying every single time, as there is always a miss chance - , at least some of my tanks that are now destroyed should have spotted their targets and destroyed them because, as I already explained before, they spent a few turns in a row having perfect LOS tho their respective T-34 target.

I've heard before about the LOS and spotting issue in the game, the cycle spotting, etc ... but never had such a bad experience regarding that particular one. IMHO, there's certainly something there to improve the game as it is ridiculous this can actually happen.
I've seen the "deserter" behaviour in the past too, but again, never affecting as many soldiers as in this battle.

Well, there goes my thought, and frustration along with it, I just hope the next battle goes a little bit better, I just ask not to have these bugs, and to be able to lose my battles by my own decisions taken, not by the game engine's ones.

Cheers!

[A Canadian Cat]

I tried to cross the bridge on the far right end of the map (German POV), and as soon as my infantry started crossing the bridge, some soldiers in a couple of squads started running the opposite way, without any apparent reason.
From that point on, those squads were done, as they were not attending the orders any further, as the "deserting" soldiers retained the "focus" of the whole squad, so all the orders were plotted over the deserters but not acknowledged by anyone. It's crazy, I know ...

Are you describing the situation where one solider form a unit runs off in a strange direction but everyone else stays put waiting for them to finish what ever insane thing they are doing?

If so, first that sucks, second here a few things you can do to get out of it. First and foremost cancel all of their movement orders. Now split the squad so you can at least get one or two team(s) out of this situation. Give them the orders you want. The team with the insane guy give no orders at all - none. Wait a turn. Then try giving them an order to go where they are right now. In effect you are asking the insane guy to come back. This sometimes works. If it does not work you need to kill him. Yeah nuts I know but if you get something that can throw HE and area fire near him and you take him out the rest of your team will start behaving again.

Now the more important thing do you have saved turns? Send me a PM and we can connect so you can share saved turns (and your password - I won't tell) privately. Ideally a save before the insane move and then the one right after where he goes rouge with an explanation of the orders in question. If you have that I can package it up and get it in front of the BFC devs.

[KeBrAnTo]

Hi canadian cat, thanks for your feedback, really appreciate it.

Yeah, that is the exact situation I had to deal with, to be honest I thought as well to cancel the movement orders for those squads in order to see if their behaviour was somehow reset, but I couldn't do so as my infantry got engagednin the middle of the bridge and I decided to stick to the movement order already given just to see if at least the rest of those teams could make it to the other side safely, I will try what you just siggested mext time that happen to me.

I have saved turns as we are using dropbox, it's just a matter of looking for the right turns, I'll do that and I'll send them to you as soon as possible.

Thanks

I tried to cross the bridge on the far right end of the map (German POV), and as soon as my infantry started crossing the bridge, some soldiers in a couple of squads started running the opposite way, without any apparent reason.
From that point on, those squads were done, as they were not attending the orders any further, as the "deserting" soldiers retained the "focus" of the whole squad, so all the orders were plotted over the deserters but not acknowledged by anyone. It's crazy, I know ...

Are you describing the situation where one solider form a unit runs off in a strange direction but everyone else stays put waiting for them to finish what ever insane thing they are doing?

If so, first that sucks, second here a few things you can do to get out of it. First and foremost cancel all of their movement orders. Now split the squad so you can at least get one or two team(s) out of this situation. Give them the orders you want. The team with the insane guy give no orders at all - none. Wait a turn. Then try giving them an order to go where they are right now. In effect you are asking the insane guy to come back. This sometimes works. If it does not work you need to kill him. Yeah nuts I know but if you get something that can throw HE and area fire near him and you take him out the rest of your team will start behaving again.

Now the more important thing do you have saved turns? Send me a PM and we can connect so you can share saved turns (and your password - I won't tell) privately. Ideally a save before the insane move and then the one right after where he goes rouge with an explanation of the orders in question. If you have that I can package it up and get it in front of the BFC devs.

[A Canadian Cat]

I would like to help out with the LOS issues and spotting problems you have but I don't know where to start with that one. So often our impression of what happened is off the mark. Many times I thought something was crap when I got down and looked at the situation myself with the trees fully on it all seemed reasonable. The kicker is none of our pixel troops spot perfectly by any means and that is by design. By that I mean even if there is clear LOS to an are it does not mean you get to see anything there instantly. That is by design. Then you add in the design limitations of the game you can sometimes get things that are probably wrong but even then most of the time it could be considered just bad luck. Of course if you keep getting bad luck over and over because of limitations it is cold comfort.

The way to come out ahead in tricky situations is to try to maximize your chances of having the luck factor swing your direction. Things like having good information sharing between your units so your tank crews have an idea of where the enemy tanks are, making sure your infantry force the enemy tanks to button up before you try to engage. Find ways to have a many to one happen locally in your favour. If you can add up those things correctly then you can start to have more "he who spots first shoots first" and "he who shoots first kills first" moments go your way.

All of which is tricky to discuss in the abstract and much easier to discuss in a particular incidence.

[A Canadian Cat]

As for the spotting rounds falling off map that sounds like total crap and I have no idea where to go with that one. You said you had it happen several times? If you want to dig into it we can try to get it to happen regularly and find the bug. When spotting rounds fall out of sight of the FO all kinds of bad things can happen. It could be that falling off map is creating that situation artificially. I don't now I'm just guessing there and should probably stop cause guessing is not helpful.

[KeBrAnTo]

One of the situations I experienced in this battle was that both tanks, the panzer and the T-34, were in LOS of each other at some point for several turns in a row, I checked that using the LOS tool, but my panzer was already there "hunting" (and another one further away behind it) when the T-34 arrived.

After two or three turns looking at each other, eventually the T-34 "spotted" my panzer and destroyed it while my tank commander was not aware of what was actually going on.

As you say, it's an "issue" pretty abstract with a diffucult explanation as there must be many in-game factors involved, but not having a clear picture about what is really going on internally in the game that makes a tank commander spot nothing where you can actually see something and the LOS tool says the same, does not help in order to address it.

I'll try to take a deeper look to that particular one and try to find a reason far that outcome.

I would like to help out with the LOS issues and spotting problems you have but I don't know where to start with that one. So often our impression of what happened is off the mark. Many times I thought something was crap when I got down and looked at the situation myself with the trees fully on it all seemed reasonable. The kicker is none of our pixel troops spot perfectly by any means and that is by design. By that I mean even if there is clear LOS to an are it does not mean you get to see anything there instantly. That is by design. Then you add in the design limitations of the game you can sometimes get things that are probably wrong but even then most of the time it could be considered just bad luck. Of course if you keep getting bad luck over and over because of limitations it is cold comfort.

The way to come out ahead in tricky situations is to try to maximize your chances of having the luck factor swing your direction. Things like having good information sharing between your units so your tank crews have an idea of where the enemy tanks are, making sure your infantry force the enemy tanks to button up before you try to engage. Find ways to have a many to one happen locally in your favour. If you can add up those things correctly then you can start to have more "he who spots first shoots first" and "he who shoots first kills first" moments go your way.

All of which is tricky to discuss in the abstract and much easier to discuss in a particular incidence.

[raz_atoth]

For what it's worth, i think the PzIVs should have spotted the T34s first, especially since the quality of the crews is higher. But as Ian said, there are a lot of factors involved when it comes to spotting and luck is one of it :)

I'm a bit puzzled about the mortar rounds falling outside the map. I think the last time i saw such a behavior was when the game engine was still at v. 1.xx. My understanding is if the FO can't see the spotting rounds the arty strike is canceled, not fired randomly on (or in this case off) the map.

[KeBrAnTo]

Yep, I ordered two barrages on two opposite edges of the map, more or less 150 meters from the actual edge of the map each one, have LOS to the target and the officers are veteran, one of them 300 meters away from the target and the other one literally at 50 meters from the target point. Artillery support request was done using line mode, with just 70 meters long or so each.

There is no strong wind involved, and wind is not likely to be causing the issue as both artillery requests were called in opposite sides of the map as wind only blows in one direction at a time.

After fire was calibrated by the spotters (I don't know how, because the spotting shells exploded off map too) shells started dropping off map in both places, so I decided to adjust them, but same result.
I adjusted fire three times one of the artillery support requests and two the other one, with the same results, only this last turn a couple of shells hit at the very edge of one side of the map.

Might be lack of luck, maybe, but it looks like very weird to me.

As far as I know (maybe I'm wrong), a spotter won't confirm the target point until he could actually spot these calibration shells otherwise they keep being fired until effective fire is confirmed, can they see the shells falling off map?, I don't know.

As for the spotting rounds falling off map that sounds like total crap and I have no idea where to go with that one. You said you had it happen several times? If you want to dig into it we can try to get it to happen regularly and find the bug. When spotting rounds fall out of sight of the FO all kinds of bad things can happen. It could be that falling off map is creating that situation artificially. I don't now I'm just guessing there and should probably stop cause guessing is not helpful.

[A Canadian Cat]

As far as I know (maybe I'm wrong), a spotter won't confirm the target point until he could actually spot these calibration shells otherwise they keep being fired until effective fire is confirmed, can they see the shells falling off map?, I don't know.

You are correct the spotter will not call for fire for effect until they have seen enough spotting rounds. I strongly suspect that there is some abstraction to let them see spotting rounds falling off map but I don't know for sure. Sound buggered though. I think the lesson here is if that happens cancel the mission and try again, this time keeping a bit further from the edge. Until this issue can get figured out. I'll add calling artillery near the map edge to my list of stuff to investigate.

[KeBrAnTo]

You are correct the spotter will not call for fire for effect until they have seen enough spotting rounds. I strongly suspect that there is some abstraction to let them see spotting rounds falling off map but I don't know for sure. Sound buggered though. I think the lesson here is if that happens cancel the mission and try again, this time keeping a bit further from the edge. Until this issue can get figured out. I'll add calling artillery near the map edge to my list of stuff to investigate.

Thanks.

BTW, I sent you a PM with a link to the savegames related to the running away guys, don't know if you got it, hope there is enough info in those two.