PT76s very slow to engage/blind also he on inappropriate targets

[Poofydoodle]

Forgive me if I am saying something stupid as I am not very familiar with the PT76 and how it operatates, I had some in the last mission I made as opponents and noticed them being kind of reluctant to engage especially with their main gun. Im not sure if the tank has really primitive sighting systems or what.

 

In my next mission a PT76 is supporting the players group of brdms and btrs and ive noticed that it doesnt seem to use its main gun very often and when it does it tends to use its frag ammo against the m113a1s and m113 recoiless rifle carriers it encounters which wont penetrate. I actually noticed similar behavior with a t55, the commander orders he and will sit there bouncing frag off the front of an m113 rcl even when heat and ke are available. I had a crew dead m113 with a running engine shut down an entire advance as the t55 pumped endless frag rounds into the front point blank until I shot it from the side with 14.5. The rcl 113a1 actually killed the t55 before I revived it with a point blank shot after surviving a point blank frag round from the t55 which seems a little silly haha.

 

But back to my main point I replaced all of the pt76s ammo with only ke and heat and it was better but still seemed reluctant to engage what should have been obvious targets in my opinion even ones up quite close inside the fairly short effective range.

 

I replaced the pt76 with a bmp1 and noticed performance that was quite.a bit better firing off main gun shots on a fairly regular basis at reasonable targets as opposed to the pt76 that seems to wait a very long time to get its bearings on a stationary target in the open and only use its frag for vehicles and not seem to engage infantry with it and maybe seldom an occupied watch tower.

 

I had an amx13, a similar era and type of vehicle, destroy the pt76 head on at around 100m or so, I kept instantly repairing the pt76 and not once did it seem to even really get close to engaging the target it was looking right at. Even with the commander turned out it seems spotting and engaging targets is quite slow.

 

Forgive me if this is all intentional to model the vehicle accurately if it had very poor optics and an awkward to use main gun but I thought I would bring it up. The pt76 suits my intent and style of the mission much better than a bmp1. Also I was wondering if the he on the 113a1s was intentional.

[Lumituisku]

I think I have witnessed same.  And I too find it odd. 

[Koen]

I had the same impression (admidettly, long time ago)

[Mezentius]

Noticed the same thing recently in Connaugh's "Elgin Marbles" scenario. Soft targets pulling up in front of the PT-76 were completely ignored.

[Ssnake]

We're going to investigate.

[Jartsev]

Well, ammunition selection by AI is based on several factors, like distance to target vs effective range of particular round,  penetration performance of  ammo available  vs perceived armor protection of particular target, target aspect etc. Now please take a look at in-game ammunition load of PT-76, and note that only HE has effective range well over 1km; this essentially means that if you have a PC somewhere  beyond 1100 meters, AI would use HE and not anything else. 

[Poofydoodle]

11 minutes ago, Jartsev said:

Well, ammunition selection by AI is based on several factors, like distance to target vs effective range of particular round,  penetration performance of  ammo available  vs perceived armor protection of particular target, target aspect etc. Now please take a look at in-game ammunition load of PT-76, and note that only HE has effective range well over 1km; this essentially means that if you have a PC somewhere  beyond 1100 meters, AI would use HE and not anything else. 

Oh I agree there but this was at fairly close range, infact trying to get a pt76 to engage at distance seems to be quite difficult. The problem with the he being fired against both variants of 113A1 I messed around with a lot more in the t55 but at point blank was still favoring he over heat and ke even after 5 or 6 shots have bounced off without damage.

 

Maybe the pt76 favors the he frag because it has the longest effective range so the ai defaults to that ammo type as it sees it as having the most capability to defend its self from a pop up target  When I am home atter work I will mess with it more and see if the pt76 does the same thing constantly like the t55 did.

[Ssnake]

In my test I found the PT-76 trigger happy as any other vehicle. It's just that against most targets, the ammo is woefully inadequate. It could kill a pathetic AMX-13 @ 500m (flank shot) only with repeated tries (OK, rendered combat ineffective after first hit with CDR and GNR incapacitated), the HEAT round is slow and not very powerful (and the PT-76s fire control "system" doesn't help at all).

But it did not suffer from target paralysis (there were many targets, some Leopard 1 tanks at under 500m which would be the max threat (were it not set to blind)).

 

My conclusion, so far, is that it's a matter of range and choice of ammo, and if, say, AP is loaded (max range 1,000m) and no target is within that range or better armored than the pathetic 110mm RHAe, I suppose the vehicle could run into a trigger lock if it's not unloading the loaded HVAP (and I suppose it adopts behavior from the tank class which (since it's modeled after the M1A1, the first tank in Steel Beasts) does not allow the AI to unload rounds except by firing).

 

So, I guess we may want to change that bit of the behavior.

[Ssnake]

...which is now registered as bug #10218.

[Poofydoodle]

Thank you for checking into that, also if you want once im home I can tell you which ammo types I had loaded in the t55 that kept firing frag against m113a1 and m113 rcl. It seems the ai feels that he should be enough to disable it but the shots just bounce off.

 

I will mess with the pt76 in my mission a bit more and see if I can pin down some definitive situations it seems to act odd. I have seen it fire HVAP at infantry in a guard tower so I think it will try to switch ammo in some circumstances perhaps.

[DarkAngel]

Need it crewable

 

[Poofydoodle]

Also I forgot to mention, it seems to me like the ai should be pumping frag out at any infantry groups it sees but im unsure exactly how the ai works in terms of frag use against infantry. I mostly noticed it used against the pinzgauers and army green 2.7t technicals standing in for 70s American utility vehicles which created some pretty amusing images in the AAR of people having a very bad day.

[Mirzayev]

2 hours ago, Poofydoodle said:

Also I forgot to mention, it seems to me like the ai should be pumping frag out at any infantry groups it sees but im unsure exactly how the ai works in terms of frag use against infantry. I mostly noticed it used against the pinzgauers and army green 2.7t technicals standing in for 70s American utility vehicles which created some pretty amusing images in the AAR of people having a very bad day.

 

In general, the AI is modeled (to my understanding, please correct me if I am horribly off here) to NOT expend main gun rounds on infantry, based on essentially wasting such a powerful and limited munition on a target of limited importance. 

 

ATGM teams are another matter, since those are a credible threat at extended ranges. 

 

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It would be very annoying if a Platoon of tanks starts expending an entire ready rack of main gun rounds on some grunt with a PKM. 

[dejawolf]

15 hours ago, Mirzayev said:

 

In general, the AI is modeled (to my understanding, please correct me if I am horribly off here) to NOT expend main gun rounds on infantry, based on essentially wasting such a powerful and limited munition on a target of limited importance. 

 

ATGM teams are another matter, since those are a credible threat at extended ranges. 

 

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It would be very annoying if a Platoon of tanks starts expending an entire ready rack of main gun rounds on some grunt with a PKM. 

only problem is those grunts usually carry RPGs of some kind in SB. 

[Poofydoodle]

That makes sense, maybe in the future we could have a setting to adjust to make them more likely to do that or perhaps make the more infantry support type tanks more likely to do it 

[Grenny]

7 hours ago, dejawolf said:

only problem is those grunts usually carry RPGs of some kind in SB. 

Well, with the current use of terrain and fortification...and all the other limitations SB infantry has...it would be balance breaking IMO to change AI behaviour to engage more readily with HE

[Mirzayev]

7 hours ago, dejawolf said:

only problem is those grunts usually carry RPGs of some kind in SB. 

 

Do good enemy analysis and stay out of their MELS. 

 

EZ.