Weird armor and infantry problems... is it just me?

[LordDragonclaw]

It seems whenever I have my infantry under cover behind sandbags or something they feel the need to RUSH out at the enemy tank and lay under its tracks instead of staying behind the cover. Tanks are worse, they seem to ALWAYS no matter WHAT rush into the enemy tank for no reason whatsoever. AT guns are also quite stupid, you tell it to displace and move to attack the enemy armor and it goes the long way around and sits right next to the enemy tank waiting to die. Does this happen to everyone? Or are my troops just damn retarded?

[XkaOnslaught]

yes, for tanks, when i click on a enemy tank to engage, SOMTIMES, my tank would instead of going into range, stop, fire, it would just rush ing with all guns blazing and collide head on with the enemy tank.

inf would some times come out of thier darn cover even when engaging enemy inf, i mean, common, you have HEAVY cover, and you wanna com out of it to engage the enemy? wtf?

[LordDragonclaw]

Yea its weird how the AI behaves. Infantry never want to stay in cover for more than one second and armor seems to enjoy ramming vehicles more than firing the main gun xD There should be a hold position button so no matter what happens the infantry/vehicle stays in the same spot until ordered elsewhere.

[Fought]

OMG... all the time. I tell my bike to kill a squad, and even if its a engineer, theyll go straight up to it and shoot it at point blank. But of course, bikes having the worst armour, it just blows up and doesnt kill a single man. exact same thing with tanks.

[XkaOnslaught]

i think the inf AI of going out of their cover is kind of leaked out from inf AI finding cover while engaging enemy WHILE trying to get as near as the enemy as possible.

i think the fact that when the inf is in heavy cover, and an enemy inf comes by, your inf will auto target the enemy inf, and the AI rule will apply: engage the enemy, get as close as possible, find cover if possible. i think the problem of the AI ranking "get as close as possible with the enemy" higher than "find cover" is the main problem.

[targetpractice2]

Is it due to the want for micro management?...I.e. in battles you persistently need to tell your troops and manouver your vehicles into position...It drives me mad when I have positioned a machine gun / at etc to face a certain direction only to find that the pc AI is intelligent enough to circle around behind them but its not clever enough to turn to face them to fire back...all they do is yell that they are underfire...I guess this is due to it being a squad orientated game thus micro management is needed. I.e a group of troops will never evacuate a building even when its being blown to bits unless you tell them to. Of course you may say I didnt tell them to rush the friggin tank...so there may need to be a setting as you say to seek cover within a zone of control and become defensive rather than what seems to always be outright attack until supressed or dead...

[Bommando]

It's much better for units to do as you say than to use too much initiative. Sometimes you may want a unit to fight to the death as a stalling tactic. So, in the cases where units don't retreat or turn to face an enemy, I believe it's best if they err to the side of the unit doing its original task and rely on you to watch them. What happens if a MG is facing Volks and is then flanked by Pioneers? You wouldn't want them to turn to face the Pioneers in favour of their more immediate threat, the Volks, right?

As far as units not doing what you want, eventually you get used to the way they behave and work out what's best in each situation. I believe the Shift-Click function is underused at the moment. I will often use Shift-Click to get a unit into the right cover and engage before moving any further. The Shift-Click function means "do what I just said, but work out what is best for you on the way". Essentially an attack-move.

So, if I want to attack a squad at close quarters at all costs, then I move first, then Shift-Attack. This ensures the unit does not engage from a distance, but instead walks right up to the unit and then attacks. This is useful for finishing off suppressed or pinned squads before they have a chance to retreat or engaging an enemy unit where you know you have close-quarters advantage. Likewise, if you want to make sure a unit stays in cover, I find that clicking move to cover first, then Shift-Clicking attack will again ensure they seek cover first and attack second.

This works the same for tanks. If you just click attack, they have a tendency to interpret that as a 'chase' order, whereas if you just Shift-Click terrain in front of the tank, it will 'attack-move' and engage any targets in LOS without charging them.

I hope this helps dispel at least a few AI problems

[Orao]

Try unchecking control squads in options.