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Smarter Tanks

This is Alarm9K´s smarter tanks mod.

This mod has been brought up to date with the addition of the:
1. X66 Mammoth tank.
2. Bourne's armoury Challenger and Abrams tanks.
3. Red Hammer Studios USSR and USA mods.
4. Bundeswehr mod (BW mod).
5. CUP vehicles.
6 Global Mobilisation weapons.

to the list of AI recognised weapons.

FEATURES:

Vehicles assess the threat/value of the targets and fire at the most dangerous/valueable target it range. It will prefer AT rifleman over autorifleman, tank over a jeep etc. Threat and value calculations use the type of target, distance and ammo types available (for tanks only). For example: AT rifleman 700m away is a more valuable target for the tank than Jeep-HMG at the same distance, but only if the tank has HE rounds. Otherwise it will prefer to fire AP round at Jeep, as the infantry unit is unreachable with current weapons. But AT rifleman still remains more dangerous than the Jeep..
Tanks will use appropriate rounds (if available) for different types of targets: HE for infantry and static weapons, HEAT for lightly armored targets ( trucks), AP for heavily armored (tanks, APCs etc).
Tanks will identify groups of infantry and use HE rounds agains them. A group is 3+ men in 15m radius. By default the tanks will not spend HE rounds on a single infantry unit (unless it's a high-threat AT soldier).
If the vehicle is a tracked vehicle (tank, tracked APC etc), it rotates the hull to face the most dangerous target.
If the threat is too high (for example an AT soldier at a close range), the moving vehicle will stop immediately, rotate the hull and fire. When the immediate threat is eliminated, it will proceed with the previous move order. This will presumably save the vehicle in situations when a hit is inevitable and the best decision is to stop and take the hit to the frontal armor rather than continue moving and take the hit to the side/rear.
Crews stay in damaged vehicles longer and can carry out light repairs such as re-hanging a track or fixing a damage motor or turret traverse.

USAGE:

To make sure this mod works and overrides all other AI mods you might have loaded, make sure you have this mod loading last on your list of mods in the launcher. Remember the last mod loaded has precedence over all others in the load list.

Some of the use cases below assume that the vehicle is in the player's group and the player can issue direct commands to the vehicle's crew, which is not always the case. If it's not then some of the options won't be available: for example, changing default round type.

Smart behaviour is activated automatically if the vehicle has an AI crew. This includes the vehicles created with the crew inside, or empty vehicles occupied after the mission start etc. Smart behaviour is activated for all factions and all groups: AI groups, vehicles in the player's group and High Command.

If either gunner, driver or commander is a human player, the smart behaviour is suspended and manual control is assumed. If the human player is replaced by AI at any moment, the smart behaviour is re-enabled.
Vehicle commander's behaviour must be either Careless, Stealth, Aware or Combat (now active in all states). To disable 'smart' behaviour set the commander to Relaxed. This is just a sort of 'switch' for dynamically enabling or disabling the smart behaviour during the mission, until I implement a separate action menu, (9kAlarm never got around to doing this)

To disable hull rotation but keep picking priority targets issue a Stop order (Action menu 1-6). The vehicle will go into Waiting state.

To resume full 'smart' behaviour, including hull rotation, issue a Move order at the vehicle's current location: the vehicle will not actually move but will go into Ready state.

If you don't want the tank to halt after encountering an immediate threat, set the commander's behaviour to Stealth. It will continue to execute its move order regardless.

For tanks there is such thing as 'default round type'. Tanks start with AP as the default. Tanks will have default round loaded unless they fire at a different type of target. If you manually give the tank commander to 'Reload HE-T`, the HE round will become default.

Having HE as default makes the tanks fire HE rounds at single infantry units (not only groups). So if you expect armored targets around, its a good idea to have AP as default, as the tanks will have AP loaded and won't waste time reloading the round. If, however, you want the tanks to use cannon against every soldier they see, make HE default.

Manually ordering the tank to target an infantry unit (action menu 2-x) will make him use HE round against assigned target, even if it's not a group of infantry.


Hope you like it.

Here is my tip jar:

paypal.me/RealPanzer
or
patreon.com/RealPanzer

Thanks

Alan