QB Strangeness

[bartleby]

I generated a quick battle in the hills. It started out fine, I placed my troops and gave them orders. Then I hit go and noticed something strange...they started taking fire at once FROM BEHIND! Apparently the computer had the same setup area as I did! While I didn't accomplish my mission, I can report with some certainty that a Stryker platoon is vulnerable to T-72 fire from the rear. Anyway. I can't really remember the other settings, but it was a real-time game, if that helps.

[CRourke]

More quick battle strangeness.

Small Attack, Armored Syrians attacking U.S., hills, June, dawn, clear, fair fit armor republican guard vs good fit Stryker.

When you hit 'OK', it goes right back to the main menu. Change terrain to 'rough' and it runs just fine.


Also, one of the small hill maps, I believe from 'Meeting at High Altitude', the QB deployment areas are messed up, opfor has deploy zone on top of U.S.

[rune]

No, I think it depends on the size of the force. Too big a force for the setup zone it bleeds into yours. Will take a look later.

Rune

[PeterLorre86]

Originally posted by CRourke:
More quick battle strangeness.

Small Attack, Armored Syrians attacking U.S., hills, June, dawn, clear, fair fit armor republican guard vs good fit Stryker.

When you hit 'OK', it goes right back to the main menu. Change terrain to 'rough' and it runs just fine.
I have had the same results with the same settings.

[Cavtroop]

Yep, nothing on the 'Hills' map works for me, either. I started another thread on this, before seeing this one.

Cav

[JaguarUSF]

If there isn't a map with the settings you requested, it goes back to the main menu. You can see all of the allowed combinations of type (meeting engagement, probe, assault, etc) and environment (hilly, town, etc) in the QuickBattles directory.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Pretty counter intuitive, to just dump you back to the menu. Or even let you choose the setting at all.

On another note, I've played 3 QB's thus far and 2 of the three have had rather poor AI activity. In the last one, I was able to walk my Syrian SF troops through a city once I realised that the entire Uncon opposition was sitting in the farthest corner of the map.

One mortar strike managed to kill 68 of 72 guys. The worst thing is that I had actually planned a pretty neat assault and wanted to see how it turned out. Advanced totally unopposed..

I would assume this is a problem with the AI plan (if it even existed for that last map), kind of left wondering how it got through to release.

[CRourke]

Ya, I'm seeing weak AI on the QB maps.. Not sure if its related to the templates for the map, or the general ability of the AI. I would imagine increased terrain complexity has made AI programming a lot harder.

[PeterLorre86]

I also am noticing weak AI in QB, although i have not moved difficulty to veteran yet. What difficulty are you all using?

[CRourke]

Elite, don't believe it affects AI strength, merely game complexity.

[benpark]

Two odd events-set everything to "random" (my forces and enemy), crashed to desktop. Second game, I kept all random but for terrain, which I set to "forest"-no forces were present at all.

[JaguarUSF]

The AI for quick battles is scripted very generally, since the designer doesn't know what units will be involved: it's basically a "set up here" and a "move here" order and that's it.

[Battlefront.com]

Game skill only messes with Fog of War for the most part. No effect on the AI or game mechanics.

JagwarUSF is correct about the plans. This is why we game developers hate AI so much! In CMx1 the AI was best at QuickBattles because it was too dumb (so to speak) to care about the specifics of the battle. To it, everything was just attack or defend and use terrain to best advantage with the units allocated.

For handmade scenarios CMx1's AI sucked because you couldn't simulate anything specific, like an ambush 15 minutes into a game or a tactical move from one spot to another spot. Again, it just defended or attacked.

CM:SF's AI is the opposite. It is MUCH better suited for handmade scenarios, and that was the point. The tradeoff is that it is difficult to get it to behave more generally for QBs. Since it isn't possible for us to code two entirely different AIs, and we feel CM's real strength is in "story based" scenarios, we went with the one that gives us a better result for hand made scenarios. I think as you guys play more and more you'll see why that was a good idea.

QBs were always best played multi-player anyway :D

Steve