Most trucks have canvass covered tops. Certainly a loaded truck is a better target of opportunity than an empty one, but, unless it's towing something, how would anyone know? (The game will tell you if you highlight the enemy unit, but isn't that "gaming the system"?)jcb989 wrote:I think the shot should be taken if those trucks are loaded with another unit... wonder if they thought of thatgortwillsaveus wrote:While I might disagree about someone rolling all trucks and suppressed units right in front of the enemy without a single shot being taken,..
if it affects both sides,..well then,..it's probably good enough.
Soldiers will engage whatever they perceive as their most immediate threat at that immediate instant (not over a span of 10's of seconds or minutes). An enemy truck suddenly coming around the corner, is an immediate threat to me and the tank I'm sitting in so I will engage it. I'm not omniscient etc, I don't know what, or who, is or isn't in the truck: is it empty? is it loaded with 2000lbs of explosives? Is it loaded with mean, pissed off, angry, anti-tank RPG toting bad guys? Maybe his buddies don't know where I am and he's going to tell them so they can come and kill me?
In the real world military, "Rules of Engagement" (ROE) dictate what a soldier is supposed to (and not supposed to) shoot at, with what, and when etc. In real life, ROEs can vary between being very granular or being very loose. They are usually somewhere between the two extremes of "Free fire, Fire at will, kill anything that moves" and "don't return fire and withdraw" (think painted white APC's and blue beret U.N. Peacekeepers).
BA has two very simple, static ROE settings:
1) Fire at will, at any enemy target that comes within your line of sight, that comes within range of the "target specific weapons" you have (meaning only engage tanks with anti-tank weapons even if it's an "anti-tank peashooter")
2) Hide. Do not engage enemy. Defend your position against actual enemy assault and direct fire only at enemy unit assaulting your position, then switch to "Fire at will" ROE.
I guess my point is that, when you consider BA's static ROE options, the game does a pretty good job of replicating what most disciplined soldiers will do in real world situations, when given one of the two BA ROEs options.
And I guess, my other point, is that the way to address the "should my tank engage an enemy truck with a reaction shot or wait to see if something bigger is coming etc" type scenario, within BA, is with, maybe, the ability to augment the two default ROE settings with customizable granular ROE settings for different units and different situations. I can see how the development of this could be problematic, but I think it would be better than trying to figure out how to get the game AI to somehow automatically anticipate how you would want a unit to take a reaction shot in every situation. I'd venture to guess that this is unrealistic and would require super computer processing power to give everyone satisfactory results etc.
It would be very nice if BA ROEs were granular and customizable. This would be especially helpful in setting up ambushes etc. As it is now, an ambush will often initiate too early (before enemy units enter the kill zone), or initiate too late (after they've already safely passed through and exited the kill zone).
sorry for rambling and being so verbose... (I'm working on that.)
cheers,
Thomas
