Montrose
Posts: 72
Joined: 8/30/2003
From: Gloucstershire UK
Status: offline
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Core issue: Ships are programmed to fire on targets with the highest Detection Level.
This can be read in the manual page 170. "The higher a ship's DL during surface combat, the more likely it is to become the target of an enemy ships weapons". It can again be confirmed by simply watching surface combat replays. The only time a ship will not fire at the highest DL target is when it returns one burst of defensive fire at any ship which fires at it.
It leads to: Massive over-concentration on the most visible target.
Any ship which is ablaze has a higher DL during day or night, and therefore attracts more and more shell fire until the AI declares it as sunk. When combat ends, very few of the enemy ships have been seriously damaged, and the unlucky few have often been overkilled many times over.
It is wrong because: 1) Detection Levels are not the right criteria for target selection. 2) The results make no sense.
Detection levels should do just that, enable ships to be detected. Deciding which ship to fire at would never be done on the basis of which was the most visible. Ship commanders were not ordered to empty their magazines into the most visible wreck afloat and ignore everything else. Target threat, mission, firer capability etc. were what mattered in RL. For some other madness, I put forward an example of the Iowa v's Yamato and burning minesweeper. If the Iowa was faced with both in WitP, it would ignore the Yamato and fire everything it had against the burning minesweeper.
For those that try to argue that surface ships were rubbish even against slow harmless transports, and that somehow this bizarre targetting is an abstract way of representing that, IMHO you are dead wrong. If warships really were this useless against all other ships, why would all major powers persist in building them at great expense. I would also say that I have a hard time believing anyone who says they do not see these kinds of results, because they are the norm in the umpteen dozen surface actions I have seen. This isn't suprising because it is programmed to be like this.
It could be solved by: 1) Dropping DLs as a targetting determinant. Or 2) Checking for sunk ships more often.
Ideally other criteria could be programmed in to give a realistic targetting routine. Target threat, mission, firer capabilities, and probably much more could be included. However, that would be a major (impossible?) effort, so in the end just anything other than Detection Levels will be a massive improvement. Random targetting from amongst visible ships would be fine.
An alternative is for the AI to check for sunk ships more often in surface combat, which will force the targetting routine to move on to another target rather than continually atomising the debris of whichever unfortunate has been picked upon.
As other have said, we all like this game, don't want to kick up a fuss, but as we'll be stuck for anything like WitP for the forseeable future, let's get this flawed aspect working properly. Also please note that this is not specifically a transport problem, not specifically a TF or a convoy problem, it is specifically a targetting problem. From that error of judgement does all the other silliness flow. It is the targetting routine specifically which needs to be fixed, and tinkering with transports or anything else is completely the wrong direction to take.
< Message edited by Montrose -- 9/11/2004 3:18:55 AM >
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I spend my time building castles in the air, but in the end all of them, and I, blow away in the wind.
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RE: Surface Combat Sux - 
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