Can your land vehicles attack automatically?

[taukarrie]

I had some seals near the carrier who fired their aa guns at incoming missiles on their own. But then I had 3 seals following a walrus moving inland and when they got jumped it seemed like none the of them fought back.

What’s the deal here?

[corbath]

ur land bots will attack when ther fired at sea or land but ther a bit thick thay realy need ther ai worked on :(

[PeaceMaker]

Originally posted by taukarrie:

I had some seals near the carrier who fired their aa guns at incoming missiles on their own. But then I had 3 seals following a walrus moving inland and when they got jumped it seemed like none the of them fought back.

What’s the deal here?

'Seemed' is the operative word.

Maybe they tried fighting back, but may not have been able to 'see' what was shooting them or didn't have the angle, (line-of-sight) etc. Move them, retreat them, get help for them, cover them or take over one and see what's going on. Also, make sure they're not out of ammo.

[pavig]

Sometimes this happens if they don't have line of sight. Most of the time if the enemy can see them then they can see the enemy, but occasionally if the enemy has high ground (like the top of a cliff etc) LOS only goes one way.

It could also be their weapon loadout. Seals will fire guns at almost anything, but AA usually only at air targets, and with missiles or artillery you need to direct their attacks.

[taukarrie]

Originally posted by pavig:

Sometimes this happens if they don't have line of sight. Most of the time if the enemy can see them then they can see the enemy, but occasionally if the enemy has high ground (like the top of a cliff etc) LOS only goes one way.

It could also be their weapon loadout. Seals will fire guns at almost anything, but AA usually only at air targets, and with missiles or artillery you need to direct their attacks.

Ok so they do have defensive behaviors and I should be able to just move them along and they'll shoot at any enemy in range with Los? I must have gotten some bad angles, or maybe i was out ranged by the enemy weapons.

Are land units still defensive when ordered to follow other units? So could I have 3 seals follow a walrus and all 4 will shoot at anything that comes close?

[pavig]

They're not smart, but they'll fire on anything they can get a bead on, so you can try having seals following a slow tanky walrus and it'll mostly work out fine. One time when it doesn't work out often is when moving through choke points, eg where the AI gets funneled through narrow inclines due to cliffs or mountainous terrain. In these areas line of sight is limited for all but the lead units and things can go bad pretty easy.

It is difficult (but not impossible) to spot these problem areas in the terrain coloring of the tactical map or by close examination of the holomap, but you'll usually notice them as odd bends in the AI pathfinding lines when you set a waypoint. Camera from a vehicle itself, the deck gun, or a gimbal cam on a spotter plane can often give you advance warning of a possible upcomming terrain chokepoint.