Stock M26 & M8 randomly shoot fixed machineguns forwarrd?

[Bear Flag]

Stock M26 & M8 randomly shoot fixed machineguns forwarrd?

I noticed that the games stock a_m26 and a_m8halftrack appear to fire their fixed/coxial 30cal_gun forward randomly/semi-continuously. There is no target that I can see. The problem it creates is that when in column formation, vehicles get destroyed by friendly fire. I looked at the XDPs and couldn't find any reason why these particular vehicles do this when others do not. For example, the a_sherman has a coaxial 30cal, and I even added ammo (3000) to the "MaxAmmo" field since the stock vehicle had only 3 (apparent stock typo), but the Sherman does not exhibit this bug.

I also noticed that the a_M26 has a typo in the main gun's name. It showed it as Type="90mm_gun", which does not exist in the guns folder. Still, I noticed by the muzzle flashes it appeared to be shooting as well. I changed it to Type="90mmM3_gun", which does exist in the guns folder, and it stopped shooting at nothing, I think... low rate of fire makes it hard to tell.

So I'm totally baffled by this random shooting issue in only certain vehicles. Has anyone else noticed this, or have any ideas? I may just change the MaxAmmo to 0 for the offending vehicles as a work-around.

 

[Daiwilletti]

Hi Bear Flag, I've noticed the same issue. In the downloads section I've provided modified vehicle xdps but this is one problem I haven't been able to fix. I suggest that you take the problematic gunstations and chance to max ammo = 2 or something. Looks like stock cfs3 has a number of vehicles where MGs are modelled, but they've given them virtually no ammo because of this problem.

You could try changing from Trainable=1 to Trainable=O for the offending MGs. When I looked at the .m3ds for many of the tanks, there was a small range of movement (usually up and down) available for some of the MGs and my "corrected" xdps allowed Trainable=1, but I think some of these MGs are shooting at the vehicles further up their formation.

While I can't offer you a fix except to say reduce the ammo, I suspect the reason for the activity is if there is an enemy in the vicinity, the MGs start shooting even if they cannot be brought to bear on the target. Hence the problem of "friendly fire".

HTH,
Dai

 

[Bear Flag]

Daiwilletti--I tried changing trainable but it made no difference, for vehicles that exhibit the bug as well as those that do not. I also thought the guns were shooting at an enemy but the AI was not aware the gun was not pointing at the target, so I tried putting the vehicles in an area with no enemies for 20+ miles, but they still shot each other up. Weird...

By the way I went through your corrections to stock vehicles and thought it was very interesting. I made all the changes manually to the XDP directly based on your notes instead of just pasting the files , and also some changes of my own to the XDPs based on personal preference.

 

[Daiwilletti]

Daiwilletti--I tried changing trainable but it made no difference, for vehicles that exhibit the bug as well as those that do not. I also thought the guns were shooting at an enemy but the AI was not aware the gun was not pointing at the target, so I tried putting the vehicles in an area with no enemies for 20+ miles, but they still shot each other up. Weird...

By the way I went through your corrections to stock vehicles and thought it was very interesting. I made all the changes manually to the XDP directly based on your notes instead of just pasting the files , and also some changes of my own to the XDPs based on personal preference.

Thanks for taking the time to test the trainable option, Bear Flag. It leaves a bit of a mystery. I don't like seeing a column shoot itself up. Strange how some of the MS models cut the ammo level on some MGs, perhaps to address this issue.

A left-field possibility is that it happens with a non-stock country.xml. In which case the AI may not be able to distinguish friend from enemy so easily. I know that I get some strange results when tinkering with the country.xml. Sometimes I get the random frontline.spawns providing ground facilities with random nationalities (although on the proper allied/axis sides). I have screen shots showing Spanish and New Zealand facilities spawning in ETO 1.4. And it took me ages to even locate where the NZ flag came from!

 

[Daiwilletti]

I made all the changes manually to the XDP directly based on your notes instead of just pasting the files , and also some changes of my own to the XDPs based on personal preference.

Also another thought - are you using Winmerge or another comparison program? It makes the task of comparing xdps very easy and differences can be spotted immediately. My version of Winmerge was freeware when I got it.

D

 

[Bear Flag]

Also another thought - are you using Winmerge or another comparison program? It makes the task of comparing xdps very easy and differences can be spotted immediately. My version of Winmerge was freeware when I got it.

D

No, I've never even heard of it Winmerge, I was just using Notepad. Although I just took a look at the Winmerge web page and it looks useful in general.

My version of CFS3 is not modded with ETO or anything else other than the official patches and my own personal vehicle mods, and all the vehicles were nationality=usa in the XPD, and the column also had USA as the country. Must be some random bug...