Military Tatics

[thisismyrifle 0]

Right, I have noticed that while there are many mods to increase the realisim of the game, e.g. realistic blood, explosions, weapons, troops. The tatics used by the units have stayed the same. Now what i was hoping was that some talented scripter would make a pepperpoting script, this is how the british army caries out a section attack. It could be done by set velocity and activated by the action menue.

and so on untill

any commets add them here.

[Guest]

Very useful, are you in the British Army by yourself?

The tactic you are showing, looks good. I once saw it in a cutscene of the CSLA2 mod, but never in others or in missions. But to be serious, I think it is hardly possible in SP missions, or when you are patrolling.

[thisismyrifle 0]

Very useful, are you in the British Army by yourself?

The tactic you are showing, looks good. I once saw it in a cutscene of the CSLA2 mod, but never in others or in missions. But to be serious, I think it is hardly possible in SP missions, or when you are patrolling.

Not in the real army but the CCF, combined cadet force (hangs head in shame). I think it is possible in sp, I can't script but may have to learn to find out.

[General Barron 0]

I'm not farmiliar with the tactics of the Brits, but in the USMC we do something called 'rushes' that look similar to what you are talking about. Only difference is that instead of having the squad divided into 2 separate teams of rushing/covering, we do it by either fireteam (3 per squad) or individual, so it ends up being less predictable as to who is going to get up next. Anyway, I've written a script for doing just that, and you can grab it here:

http://www.ofpec.com/editors/resource_view.php?id=683

*edit*

added in www... I guess ofpec.com doesn't work anymore...

[thisismyrifle 0]

OMG

thankyou

[KeyCat 131]

While General Barron´s script is a great idea and makes the AI soldier advance more realisticly the side effect is unfurtunately that the AI soldier becomes much less efficiant in firefights. I had planed to use it myself but while testing it I noticed that the AI will be to occupied to move instead of fighting so I scraped the idea.

/Christer (a.k.a KeyCat)

[HuNtA 0]

that looks a teeny bit like pepperpotting. THats when a squad split in half (or with 2 squads) and while half the squad is advancing, the other half give covering fire. THen the team who just assaulted give covering fire while the team who gave covering fire assault

also, using doMove would be easier than using setvelocity

[TA-50 0]

In the US Army squad movement techniques like these are broken down into:

1) traveling

2) bounding over-watch

3) traveling over-watch

Traveling is best described as putting your troops in one of the OFP formations and then walking from point A to B.

Bounding is best described as leap-frogging, where one group is stationary and covering a moving element.

Traveling over-watch consists of one unit in constant movement while the other covers by leap-frogging.

I use these in OFP without scripting just by calling 'danger' and 'stay low'.  I then move groups of two to three men at a time with one group always waiting in 'ready' status to as the cover the men who are moving.  No scripting, just proper use of the command interface.

[GrimRanger 0]

The meaning with this technique is to always fire at the enemy position so they wont stick their head up and shoot back,

but the ai in ofp does not run for cover. He just gets down and starts to fire back at you.

[ralphwiggum 6]

i also thought of these stuff, but it seems like AI code itself is the solution, and scripting is somewhat handicapped in this aspect.

[Commando84 0]

i think the built in ofp formations works just fine

hehe but thats just me

[General Barron 0]

Quote[/b] ]While General Barron´s script is a great idea and makes the AI soldier advance more realisticly the side effect is unfurtunately that the AI soldier becomes much less efficiant in firefights. I had planed to use it myself but while testing it I noticed that the AI will be to occupied to move instead of fighting so I scraped the idea.

Exactly. Here we have a problem of the engine limitations of OFP getting in the way of realism. What I mean is, this tactic is used in the real world, but in OFP, it is generally useless. Therefore, either OFP is flawed, or the tactic is flawed. I'm gonna put my money on the first choice...

Quote[/b] ]The meaning with this technique is to always fire at the enemy position so they wont stick their head up and shoot back,

but the ai in ofp does not run for cover. He just gets down and starts to fire back at you.

This is only part of the problem. But there is a more important problem: there is nowhere to take cover. Sure, there are a few bushes every 50m or so, but IRL, you can lay down behind a little rock in the middle of a field, or behind a small bump in the ground, etc. OFP lacks this completely, as do many other games, due to CPU limitations.

Even if it had this "micro terrain", the controls are so limited, so you couldn't really take advantage of it. If anyone has played paintball, for example, you know that you do more than just (a) stand straight up, (b) crouch, or © lay prone. You adjust your body to the terrain around you, smooshing yourself in however you can.

NO video game that I know of accurately simulates this, and I don't see any attempt to. I've always thought that a "take cover" button would be a good idea: pressing it would make your guys fit himself into the cover in front of him as best as he can. But this might also be too much for current computers to handle, so oh well....

In summary, OFP is a pretty limited simulation in this very key aspect of infantry combat. It's still better than almost all other FPS out there, but we've got a long way to go towards a more realistic game...

------------

Now, bringing it back to OFP. I've found that if you use HD weapons, like those in the SEBnam pack, then you can *sorta* correct for these limitations. Realistically, the weapons are way, way to innaccurate, of course; even in the AI's horrible accuracy with them. However, the effect of this is that it is best to get as close as you can to the enemy, in order to kill him, which is the basic premise behind real life tactics.

For example, in OFP, it is no problem to pick off some idiot laying in the middle of the field, 300+m away. The same shot in real life would be just as easy, assuming the guy is laying down in a parking lot (the equivalent of OFP terrain). However, in real life the guy would likely have a small ditch, or a rock, or a few small shrubs, or some other form of cover.

Suddenly that same shot can become nearly impossible, if the guy just keeps his head down. Therefore, you need to use flanking tactics to get around his cover, or you just need to rush and close to him (50m or so), so you can throw a grenade on him, for example.

By default, this doesn't happen in OFP, because the AI can never take cover like in the example above. But if your weapons are just so horribly accurate that you need to be 50m away just to hit the SOB, then you get the same effect, only without the cover.

Anyway, that's just my take on the issue, and it is the reason why I'll never make a mission without HD weapons again, and I'd suggest everyone else do the same. I've found that rushing actually becomes a useful tactic when using HD weapons; especially for the player. Normally in OFP I just sit back and pick everyone off from like 300+m, but with HD, it is best to get close. Flanking also has meaning, because bushes and trees (the tiny bit of cover actually in OFP) become 2-3x better in terms of cover.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

[lecholas 2]

I totally agree with last post of Gen. B. HD weapons are the best we've got to simulate covering fire and prevent player (and AI) from picking enemies from a far too far distance. I also agree that one of the biggest problem in ofp is lack of small cover (that is why i like CoD altough it's still only arcade shooter). I hope that it will be solved in a way  by islands from I44 mod - they've got lovely grass all over the isladns (but I44 weapons are deadly accurate! ) I only fear that the grass will cover ai's field of view so good that it won't shoot anymore after going to prone.

The one who attempted to force AI to take cover under fire is again Gen. B. (i watch his work carefully and with respect - keep it up) - check this thread but as you can read there somethig is wrong with it (it CTD for me to - but i've noticed that the lower frame rate the crash comes faster)

What i think that can be done for more realistic military tactics in ofp is exchancing player's commanding abillities - Gen. B. tried it in his mission. It was a greate try but for me it was too complicated to manage two squads and a radioman with ofp's radio interface (just press 0-0-1 then 0-0-5 and then 0-0-3 and one order is issiued). It could be easly solved if ofp supported binding commands or execution of scripts to keys (like Quake engines) but afaik (apart from 'spare keys') ofp does not allow that. Mabey it could be reworked to dialogs? Dialogs made CoC command system much more usable...

I also tried to do sth in this direction many times but every time i failed miserable    (btw is there a way to make game logic part of player's team in a way that does not crashes ofp?)