Recent work Scott has been doing..

Wodin

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Below is a copy and paste of an email I got yesterday..


Hi Jason,

Well, it's been a long road, but I think the artillery fire is finally under control. I pretty much completely redid the way it worked, so now it's CEP based (instead of accuracy), and also broke it down so that there is a "mission" CEP (how far off the central aiming point is off from where it is intended - modelling the accuracy of maps, communications, training and stuff like that), as well as an individual round CEP (how far each round varies from the "perfect flight path", to acocunt for barrel wear, minor difference is charge weights, weapons system limitations, and stuff like that).

So now it works like this:

1) The target is selected.
2) The AI picks a central aiming point based on the target type and location (to the nearest meter).
3) The Mission CEP is applied to that point - potentially shifting it by some amount, to give an actual central aiming point.
4) The AI assigns a "spread" to the rounds, based on the target size, firing unit, and number of rounds being fired.
5) Using the spread, the AI devises a pattern of individual aiming points (one for for each firing weapons system), offset from the central point.
6) The rounds are fired individually, at their respective aiming points.
7) Actual impact points are determined using the "Round CEP" value, offset from the "perfect" aiming point in the previous step.
8) The round is checked along its flight path to see if it hits anything before reaching the adjusted impact point, for instance into the side of a hill or tall building.

All aiming points and CEP offsets are to the nearest meter.

In an example game (your Nebelwerfer one), a German 105mm arty unit is firing at a cluster of infantry. The unit fires 5 rounds in its first salvo, and they end up being spread out over an area of about 120m x 100m - impacing in 3 different hexes (3 rounds land in the main hex, one round each in two adjacent ones).

So it seems to work. :)

I'll also let you know that part of what has caused this to take so damn long is that I also had to update the AI and reporting. I'm not quite done wiht the reporting, but I can say that I had two bugs (one in the AI and one in the reporting) that were wickedly difficult to find - between the two of them I lost over 6 days!

Anyway, I hope to be wrapping this up shortly, maybe tomorrow. But I want to make sure I've tested as many things as I can think of first (in-flights, guided munitions, PMD effects, etc). Because of the huge number of fundamental changes I've made, I'll probably send you an update to check out before I look at some of the other things still outstanding.
 
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