Slitherine

First two examples. One I think illustrates that it's too restrictive and one showing the difficulties in moving forward.

- I have a Sherman on a street three tiles from a corner. A Panther moves forward from behind the corner. In doing so it must expose its side. It's two tiles between him and my Sherman. Nothing. He can turn and face me at his leisure and shoot. He misses. Still no reaction from the Sherman. Second shot destroys it.
- I have three German tanks out in the open. Good ones, two stug and one panzer something. They are lined up next to each other with nearly the same field of fire. During the opponents turn three of his tanks scoot and shoot. They must all have been in the field of fire of at least two of mine. My tanks didn't fire a single shot. I was lucky enough to not get anyone killed but two dropped significantly in moral. Back behind cover they went next turn.

I've seen how players(me included) have become more and more fearfull of leaving any tank not in cover at turns end. It's just to dangerous when any and all of the enemy tanks can move up and shoot at almost no risk. This leads to, frankly quite boring gameplay, when both players is limited to move tanks a few tiles forward, shoot if there is any target, do nothing if there's not and then back again behind cover.

First I think the chance for opfire when the enemy is first spotted need tweaking. Be a bit higher and take in account stuff like flank shot and threat level.
Second, being shot at could give a certain or almost certain response at least 2-3 times. That means more free shots but only if shot at. Any saved ammo could count against shots fired when the enemy is first spotted but when the tank shoots back when fired at it's a free shot. As it is now even the most puny of allied tanks can shoot at Panthers in the hope of lower its moral. Harder to do if one know there will be return fire!
Best would be if there was some kind of "frontal arc" to wich this would apply. If approached and shot at from outside this frontal arc the certainty and accuracy of return fire should go down.
Also, if the first shot from the enemy tank results in a ricochet the crew could get "rattled" and maybe not shoot back or with diminished accuracy. Could be a new bonus for elite troops..."Coolness under Fire". No penalties even after being hit with a ricochet

I'm really digging the game, but I need to likely concur, the idea a stationary tank with Op fire available is being hosed by a shoot and scoot tactic makes Op Fire seem pointless if it accomplished nothing.

The opfire thing has had me miffed on a number of instances as well. I can't count the number of times that I've placed a tank in a position hidden from an enemy armor unit's view (around the corner of a hedge, for example) knowing that the enemy unit would not be able to spot me until it has moved into my field of fire with my unit shooting directly into it's flank. How the game figures that the enemy unit can move into my killzone, spot my unit, turn, aim, fire and kill mine before I get a shot is beyond me.

Easy8 wrote:The opfire thing has had me miffed on a number of instances as well. I can't count the number of times that I've placed a tank in a position hidden from an enemy armor unit's view (around the corner of a hedge, for example) knowing that the enemy unit would not be able to spot me until it has moved into my field of fire with my unit shooting directly into it's flank. How the game figures that the enemy unit can move into my killzone, spot my unit, turn, aim, fire and kill mine before I get a shot is beyond me.

This.

I quickly learned that position means almost nothing in this game as armor. Hopefully it changes.

We're in the process of working out the best fix for what does seem to be an annoying irritation. But we want to take our time to make sure we don't introduce any other oddities.

Cheers

Pip

pipfromslitherine wrote:We're in the process of working out the best fix for what does seem to be an annoying irritation. But we want to take our time to make sure we don't introduce any other oddities.

Cheers

Pip

Very nice to hear. I'm sure you will find a good solution!

That is good to hear pip, and I understand you want to ensure any changes are warranted, but can you give some indication of exactly what you are looking at and/or what direction you are going?

DSWargamer wrote:I'm really digging the game, but I need to likely concur, the idea a stationary tank with Op fire available is being hosed by a shoot and scoot tactic makes Op Fire seem pointless if it accomplished nothing.

So called Shoot&Scoot was common practice in WW2, especially by the Allies who were often out-gunned in a formal AP exchange. But the 'scoot', unlike in BA, was a very quick exposure followed by reverse back into cover. Vehicles can't reverse here, but sitting mute will an enemy tank 'crosses your T' really needs to be addressed. I know it's more a complex issue than it appears.

On the reaction fire issue it is a really tough one to call every time. One option is to try and give you more control over when to fire/not fire but it feels like this adds micromanagement we dont want as part of the core design and is priobably best left to a mod for harcore players. What we could do is give units % chance to react based on the number of shots they have used. If they have shots remainign they always react. If they are in to negative shots then each one reduce teh chance to react by 20%. E.g. you get 2 shots, you dont fire in your turn. In your opponents turn your first chance to recat is 100% as you ghave 2 shots. Your second chance to react is 100%. Your 3rd chance to react is 80% as you have no shots remaining. And so on.

Another addition I think I would like for MP games is force morale. When say 66% of your units are destroyed your force morale crumbles and you lose. This would immediately stop the truck baiting as a lost truck would be as bad as a lost Tiger for force morale.

That's good to hear Iain re OpFire. At what range are we talking about? I am not sure this addresses some of the excessive 'shoot/scoot' issues which is really related to movement. From another thread:

adherbal wrote:

I wonder if it would make sense to add a "static shot" that consumes not only an action/attack point but also all remaining movement points. The accuracy (chance to hit) of the shot would bebased on how many movement points are currently remaining. So if you haven't moved at all it's very accurate, but when you've moved at full speed (all MP consumed) it's very inaccurate.

Any thoughts on this? Is there any chance of having OpFire tied to the units previous turn's movement, ie Fast move then poorer chance at OpFire, Hunt a better chance of Opfire. This will give a bigger incentive to use proper tactics and reduce the cat&mouse tedium of shoot&scoot I think. Shoot&Scoot was used by all nations in WWII, but it wasn't a Tank running hell bent for leather across hundreds of meters, popping off a few shots, then retreating hundreds of meters. An AFV hunted to aquire the target, exposing itself briefly to shoot, then a quick retreat to another position.

I like the Force Morale a lot! It would make the player preserve those assets, though I have not seen anyone use Trucks for reece myself. What I have seen are a few people using Broken(negative morale) units to probe and scout the line, soaking up opfire shots, a very cheesy tactic imo. This will help alleviate that.

We did have a move penalty if you moved the previous turn but it was hard to feedback to players. Shoot and scoot only works because teh defender does not always return fire. By increasing the chance of the defender to return fire you'll put teh static unit at an advantage.

We could also give static units a bonus so hunting was not as good as being stationary.

My biggest beef is when a moving unit spots a static unit that has opfire shots available at close range but the moving unit still gets to shoot first, sometimes multiple times. I do not know how the game calculates when a unit spots another, but I think in most cases that the static unit would have the advantage unless the moving unit was approaching the static unit's flank or rear. This should especially be true if the static unit appears to the moving unit's flank or rear; it should always get the 1st shot provided it has them available.

It is based on facing - a tank does not react well to the flanks and not at all to the rear.

It also looks at chance to kill. If you can;t hurt it you dont fire. The threshold for a kill chance drops as the range decreases. At range 2 or less they always fire if they are able to.

It also looks at enemy chance to hurt you. If the target has a high chance to kill you, you open fire anyway whether you can hurt them or not. No point in saving shots if you are going to be destroyed...

It also takes account of whether the target coming in to view is hunting. Hunting units have a chance to sneak out and get first shot. This simulates edging round a corner to fire rather than driving down the middle of the road.

Just another thought about the shoot and scoot thing: Perhaps units should lose their remaining movement points after using their second shot? This would still allow you to move & shoot, or move & shoot & move again, but not move & shoot & shoot again (more accurately) & move again.

I often find myself getting off both shots, then retreating to safety. IMO the time it would take to shoot and reload twice should nolonger leave any time left for movement.

It's something I've been thinking about but it has too far reaching consequences for single player. We'd need to rebalance from mission 1 upwards.

Some games use different unit stats in MP and SP, mostly for that reason. A game with competitive MP almost always requires several balance patches so this avoids affecting the balance of SP scenarios. After all I don't think anyone complained about the scoot & shoot abilities in SP. The AI doesn't use them (intentionally) so it's not really a problem there.

The downside is that new players might be confused by the different behaviour in SP and MP though. But perhaps it's worth considering. A different set of stats in MP would also allow people to mod their SP files without affecting MP.

adherbal wrote:Just another thought about the shoot and scoot thing: Perhaps units should lose their remaining movement points after using their second shot? This would still allow you to move & shoot, or move & shoot & move again, but not move & shoot & shoot again (more accurately) & move again.

I often find myself getting off both shots, then retreating to safety. IMO the time it would take to shoot and reload twice should nolonger leave any time left for movement.

I think this would be a great compromise.

insidius wrote:

adherbal wrote:Just another thought about the shoot and scoot thing: Perhaps units should lose their remaining movement points after using their second shot? This would still allow you to move & shoot, or move & shoot & move again, but not move & shoot & shoot again (more accurately) & move again.

I often find myself getting off both shots, then retreating to safety. IMO the time it would take to shoot and reload twice should nolonger leave any time left for movement.

I think this would be a great compromise.

Agree.

It is very easy to have custom behaviour in MP games but I do think it leads to confusion for beginners. See how it feels with the next update. They are definitely more responsive.

We can even have custom behaviour in a single map. If you want to do this, scripting a MP with this behaviour would be pretty simple. Basically all you would have to do is check in the move function that a unit had shots left before it could move.

It also looks at chance to kill. If you can;t hurt it you dont fire. The threshold for a kill chance drops as the range decreases. At range 2 or less they always fire if they are able to.

It also looks at enemy chance to hurt you. If the target has a high chance to kill you, you open fire anyway whether you can hurt them or not. No point in saving shots if you are going to be destroyed...

The chance to kill is more influential than the threat from the enemy I gather.
I'm not sure it's the best way. One Hellcat of mine opened fire three times at a Sdkfz (never hit) that is no threat to it. After the Hellcat had wasted all three rounds a Puma could move up and destroy it. One round may be ok but surely it would be wise to spare a round or two in case a real threat show up?