kbluck
18 Oct 04, 22:19
OK, on to the next pressing issue: what the heck happened to direct fire suppression in v.1.03 and later?
I remember when I was first tinkering with my custom DB back in v.1.02, I found that once I lowered the pKs for small arms vs. infantry enough so that dismounts weren't killed the instant they received a couple of bursts, a very satisfying effect was realized. As you laid fire on a target, its suppression marker built up to max gradually but smoothly. It stayed up as long as you continued to pump in fire, and when you stopped, the marker stayed up for a while longer and then gradually started to diminish until it was gone.
Then v.1.03 came out, and that all changed. Now, the same fire on the same target would result in a "flickery" suppression state, as it flashed back and forth between max and no suppression in the course of a second. The net result, even when maintaining fire on a target, is that the target will be unsuppressed during the in-between burst intervals, even though it had been fully suppressed the second before, and is thus able to return effective fire largely unimpeded. Even with heavy weapons, when you tag something it generally goes to max for a couple of seconds, and then very rapidly falls back to zero. Units spend hardly any time in the "partial" state. The net result is that DF suppression has lost most of its practical utility unless you are able to arrange to have something impacting the enemy literally every single second, something not easy to arrange even with large forces given the game's "lockstep" rates of fire.
So, what happened with that patch?
Here's how I think it *should* work. Of couse, my understanding of the internals is limited, so this might be totally impractical, but here goes.
Suppression is more about sheer volume of fire than "kill potential" of that fire. There is some relationship, but volume trumps precision every time in terms of suppression effect, if not in overall effectiveness. Troops can often be suppressed by fire that is not likely to actually hurt them. There are even numerous accounts to be found of armored forces being turned back by vigorous small arms resistance, even though the defenders had no chance of actually seriously hurting anything. You have to look at it from the point of view of the tank crew. Resistance is resistance. It might just be a machine gun now, but what if there is an unspotted antitank weapon right next to them getting ready to fire? At the least, small arms can force a tank crew to "button up", reducing their visibility substantially, and it can also damage vision devices. The nerve-racking experience of hearing a hail of fire "pinging" off the armor can certainly inhibit the crew's smooth function as well. That all adds up to suppressive effect, although of course of a lesser magnitude than would be suffered by a less well-protected target.
As such, I would make the suppressive "value" of any given hit a function of the suppress radius for the weapon and the protection factor for the target. The suppress radius, to me, is a measure of "fire volume". I would *not* factor in the pK to this function. The radius also has the advantage of being zeroable. If a weapon has a suppress radius of zero, then it should never be fired on Suppress SOP. If the radius is nonzero, then it will be fired in Suppress SOP, even against targets it can't possibly kill.
The effect of suppression in game terms is simply to slow everything down. A possible implementation might be to make it so that suppression levels range from 0% to 100%. Every iteration of the game main loop once per second, the unit has suppress% chance of "skipping" its action for that second.
Oh, and I absolutely hate the Suppress SOP "circle". I understand the concept behind it, that a given group of weapons should only be able to suppress a limited area, but the circle is a logical-sounding idea that just doesn't work well in practice. For the player it is merely clumsy and easy to forget to update. For the scenario designer it pretty much rules out any use of suppression by the AI, which particularly hamstrings the AI enemy on the attack. I'm an advocate of getting rid of the Suppress circle altogether, and allowing units on Suppress SOP to simply distribute their fire among all enemy units they can see, perhaps weighted for range and threat value, and constrained only by Fire Control SOP. The "limited effect" issue would take care of itself; a squad trying to suppress a company isn't going to accomplish much with or without the circle. Fire Control would do a perfectly good job of limiting suppressive fire to a specific concentrated sector if the player wished to do that; if not, you wouldn't have a forgotten circle preventing your units from firing when there is a clear and present threat outside the circle.
I have no idea if any of this is practical. But it ought to give you an idea of how I think suppression *should* work in the game.
Irregardless of my "wish list", I really would like to know what happened with v.1.03 suppress effects.
Thanks,
--- Kevin
I remember when I was first tinkering with my custom DB back in v.1.02, I found that once I lowered the pKs for small arms vs. infantry enough so that dismounts weren't killed the instant they received a couple of bursts, a very satisfying effect was realized. As you laid fire on a target, its suppression marker built up to max gradually but smoothly. It stayed up as long as you continued to pump in fire, and when you stopped, the marker stayed up for a while longer and then gradually started to diminish until it was gone.
Then v.1.03 came out, and that all changed. Now, the same fire on the same target would result in a "flickery" suppression state, as it flashed back and forth between max and no suppression in the course of a second. The net result, even when maintaining fire on a target, is that the target will be unsuppressed during the in-between burst intervals, even though it had been fully suppressed the second before, and is thus able to return effective fire largely unimpeded. Even with heavy weapons, when you tag something it generally goes to max for a couple of seconds, and then very rapidly falls back to zero. Units spend hardly any time in the "partial" state. The net result is that DF suppression has lost most of its practical utility unless you are able to arrange to have something impacting the enemy literally every single second, something not easy to arrange even with large forces given the game's "lockstep" rates of fire.
So, what happened with that patch?
Here's how I think it *should* work. Of couse, my understanding of the internals is limited, so this might be totally impractical, but here goes.
Suppression is more about sheer volume of fire than "kill potential" of that fire. There is some relationship, but volume trumps precision every time in terms of suppression effect, if not in overall effectiveness. Troops can often be suppressed by fire that is not likely to actually hurt them. There are even numerous accounts to be found of armored forces being turned back by vigorous small arms resistance, even though the defenders had no chance of actually seriously hurting anything. You have to look at it from the point of view of the tank crew. Resistance is resistance. It might just be a machine gun now, but what if there is an unspotted antitank weapon right next to them getting ready to fire? At the least, small arms can force a tank crew to "button up", reducing their visibility substantially, and it can also damage vision devices. The nerve-racking experience of hearing a hail of fire "pinging" off the armor can certainly inhibit the crew's smooth function as well. That all adds up to suppressive effect, although of course of a lesser magnitude than would be suffered by a less well-protected target.
As such, I would make the suppressive "value" of any given hit a function of the suppress radius for the weapon and the protection factor for the target. The suppress radius, to me, is a measure of "fire volume". I would *not* factor in the pK to this function. The radius also has the advantage of being zeroable. If a weapon has a suppress radius of zero, then it should never be fired on Suppress SOP. If the radius is nonzero, then it will be fired in Suppress SOP, even against targets it can't possibly kill.
The effect of suppression in game terms is simply to slow everything down. A possible implementation might be to make it so that suppression levels range from 0% to 100%. Every iteration of the game main loop once per second, the unit has suppress% chance of "skipping" its action for that second.
Oh, and I absolutely hate the Suppress SOP "circle". I understand the concept behind it, that a given group of weapons should only be able to suppress a limited area, but the circle is a logical-sounding idea that just doesn't work well in practice. For the player it is merely clumsy and easy to forget to update. For the scenario designer it pretty much rules out any use of suppression by the AI, which particularly hamstrings the AI enemy on the attack. I'm an advocate of getting rid of the Suppress circle altogether, and allowing units on Suppress SOP to simply distribute their fire among all enemy units they can see, perhaps weighted for range and threat value, and constrained only by Fire Control SOP. The "limited effect" issue would take care of itself; a squad trying to suppress a company isn't going to accomplish much with or without the circle. Fire Control would do a perfectly good job of limiting suppressive fire to a specific concentrated sector if the player wished to do that; if not, you wouldn't have a forgotten circle preventing your units from firing when there is a clear and present threat outside the circle.
I have no idea if any of this is practical. But it ought to give you an idea of how I think suppression *should* work in the game.
Irregardless of my "wish list", I really would like to know what happened with v.1.03 suppress effects.
Thanks,
--- Kevin