RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION?

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RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION?

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RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? - 3/25/2019 8:47:07 AM

Bivoj_MatrixForum

Posts: 46
Joined: 12/13/2010
Status: offline

It is not only about March order - important unit taking a long detour in the heat of battle is even worse.

I would suggest limit the lenght of detour, that alone would help a lot.

In addition, logic like this would solve the issue:

IF path is blocked by fiendly unit THEN do not recalculate the route; approach as close as possible to the blocked tile and wait if necessary.
Could be more difficult to implement, but it would lead to realistic traffic jams.

Allowing 2 units per tile would be nice as well, but the rules above should work much better. Increasing stacking limit would help to make other situations more "realistic" (for example unloading infantry from transport or more realistic combined infantry&armor tactics)

(in reply to mmacguinness)

Post #: 61

RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? - 3/25/2019 9:45:50 AM

mmacguinness

Posts: 95
Joined: 2/3/2007
Status: offline

My suggestion relates only to March Formation because march orders do not give discretion to vehicle commanders in regards to march order, speed or route.

For the sake of speed of advance, Soviet doctrine was to advance in March Formation until contact was imminent. All Formations would be a mix of infantry, armor, sp artillery and AAA/SAM, etc. Each with different speed capabilities.

As it is now, to model a single company sized inf/armor/spa Forward Security Element in March Formation requires an inordinate amount of micro-management (i.e. the player has to continuously act as multiple NCO's and MP's) to maintain march discipline. Multiple FSE's or battalion sized formations? Way too much work.

As for stacking limits, I don't think they are necessary, enemy artillery will enforce stacking discipline. But if they are, here are a few suggestions:

1. Dismounted personnel should never be an obstruction to vehicle movement.
2. Grid width is several times bigger than vehicle width. A single stationary vehicle is never an obstruction to movement. Noted that this may be unrealistic in some urban old city locations, but overall less unrealistic than current situation.
3. Multiple stationary vehicles in a grid square could impose increasing movement penalties on transiting vehicles representing the burden of having to drive aound the stationary vehicles.

(in reply to Bivoj_MatrixForum)

Post #: 62

RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? - 3/25/2019 12:57:34 PM

reg_reg

Posts: 14
Joined: 3/1/2019
Status: offline

I like your idea.

It make sense for individual vehicles / squads within their platoon to maintain their marching order or relative position in the platoon. I guess that this could be added as a new SOP behaviour, as discussed a few posts ago.

It also opens opportunity to model movement of larger formations / task forces. For example, in "Who will stop the rain" scenario I put my forces in wedge formation, as I was not sure where and on which side the contact would occur. In order to move them I grouped them together and issued a series of waypoints. But than I had to manually operate waypoints in order to maintain that formation. It would help if we could group multiple units into a task force and than provide marching order for the force.

CMANO has a formation editor that enables you to define relative position in reference to leading ship. I appreciate that sea has much less restriction to movement than land and that such feature could not be easily implemented into the game, but it is still interesting to see how it was solved there.

CMANO formation editor

Regarding stacking limits, I don't see that as terrible limitation. It would be nice if we could have more realistic infantry / armor tactics (as mentioned by Bivoj_MatrixForum ), so we could for example use tanks to protect squads, but I'm not sure if that could be easily implemented with current engine.

(in reply to mmacguinness)

Post #: 63

RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? - 3/26/2019 11:14:18 PM

Veitikka

Posts: 1304
Joined: 6/25/2007
From: Finland
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I have limited the player unit 'detour' path length to +100% of the remaining length of the original path. This can occur after the unit has started moving, and another unit has moved to block its path or if minefields, terrain fires or such have appeared on the path. It needs more testing to see how well this solution works in practice.

In addition to that, I added the corresponding event action option.

Attachment (1)

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Post #: 64

RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? - 3/27/2019 8:55:57 AM

Bivoj_MatrixForum

Posts: 46
Joined: 12/13/2010
Status: offline

Great! I believe it will improve the game significantly.

What about the rule, that if the path is blocked by friendly unit, no detour is calculated at all and the unit is moving as close as the blocked tile as possible?

(in reply to Veitikka)

Post #: 65

RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? - 3/28/2019 11:01:36 PM

Veitikka

Posts: 1304
Joined: 6/25/2007
From: Finland
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bivoj_MatrixForum

What about the rule, that if the path is blocked by friendly unit, no detour is calculated at all and the unit is moving as close as the blocked tile as possible?

I suppose that you suggest that the unit should wait until the blocking unit has moved away. There are a few issues with this. Even if this could work for the player units, because the player can then manually organize the traffic jams, it would not work for the AI opponent, at least as long as the one-unit-per-cell rule exists. The worst case is a bridge or other bottleneck with units coming in from both directions. The AI opponent cannot be allowed to get stuck when he is advancing. Of course we could make the player units and the AI opponent units behave differently, but in this case it's questionable, in my opinion. It would make the formation behavior of two sides quite different. Another issue is that some think that formation movement is very slow in this game. Vehicles waiting for squads to crawl away would make it even slower.

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(in reply to Bivoj_MatrixForum)

Post #: 66