Infantry in SBP

[Skybird]

Ssnake wrote at SimHQ:

While there have been some improvements over SB1 as far as the competency of infantry is concerned, they still are somewhat basic. Improving especially the player's abilities to command them more effectively will be one of our development focuses this year, and maybe even 2007.

Steel Beasts is not a shooter. Traditionally infantry was treated primarily under the aspect of their capabilities to defeat/defend against armored vehicles. If led by a human player, they can be efficient scouts, call in artillery, and sneak up against armored vehicles to attack them, especially in restrictive terrain.

Nevertheless expect high casualty rates for dismounts in general.

Our intent is to switch over to polygon based infantry models with more animations, e.g. the ability to crawl on the ground as a basic measure to reduce their signature (at the price of being essentially immobile). There is however the fundamental problem of developing algorithmic solutions for behavior. The more degrees of freedom every agent (soldier, or vehicle crew) has, the more complicated it is to develop the heuristics to make computer-controlled agents act competently. Therefore it may be better design to limit the number of different actions that dismounted infantry can perform and let them handle these limited actions competently rather than making everything possible while nothing works properly.

Sounds fair.

[joea]

Agree with that assessment.