Of harvesters and tanks

[ant222]

My officers are rather envious of the skill of the enemy tank gunners who can fire from a moving tank with great accuracy. By deft operation of the rotating turret they often manage to engage targets not only while heading towards them but also while passing them by and even moving away from them. Is there a way to train my gunners accordingly?

Is there a procedure to attach a harvester to a specific Spice Silo? Even after unloading by explicit order at the required Silo they will often revert to another Silo even though it be much father away from the spice field.

[Nyerguds]

Turrets rotate randomly all the time... can't really do anything about that.

As for harvesters, uh, without carryalls, they generally just go to the closest empty one. With carryalls, I have no idea if even that applies, though once you have carryalls it kind of doesn't matter anymore. So, in short... get carryalls :P

Anyway, harvesters returning to different (and, in some games, plain inaccessible) refineries is a problem that I think every Westwood C&C game has. So don't count on there being a fix in their pre-C&C RTS :P

[ant222]

Turrets rotate randomly all the time... can't really do anything about that.

Not so with the turrets of the enemy tanks! I think I can record a video showing that if need be.

[X3M]

You have posted this in the Dune2 section, correct game?

 

Regarding the rotating turret.

Even though I get the feeling that the AI could do this with the Combat Tank and Siege Tank. I also have the feeling that a player can do this too, only is too slow for it.

 

When a tank gets the order to move from A to B.

And these 2 fields are right next to each other, so no other fields in between.

Then the tank moves to that position while also facing that position with its turret.

Now if you give it the order to shoot something while it is moving already, the turret will actually point to the target that is at hand. But the tank will not shoot until it has reached B.

 

What you have witnessed is that the AI Tank moved from A to B to C. While moving to C, it passes B and has a chance to shoot you. For you it looks like it is doing both at the same time, but the AI has one frame for the shooting while standing "still" on B. Then the next frame it moves again, further to C.

 

I hope this explains.

[ant222]

X3M,

Yes, I am talking about Dune II. Yours is an interesting explanation and I'll have it in mind when analysing a relevant video recording. Thank you.

[Nyerguds]

I think it took until RA1 for Westwood to make an actual command to allow the player to move somewhere while targeting other stuff.

[ant222]

As promised, and although belated, here's our intelligence on the enemy tanks' firing on the move, probably owing to their secret gun stabilizers:

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59075928/DuneII-TanksShootingOnTheMove.zip

 

The archive contains several exatractions from our reconnaisance 'topter's camera, encoded using the Zip Motion Block Video codec, used by DosBox and available from its distribution.

[Nyerguds]

Uh. I know they do it. But as I said, it took WW until RA1 to make a function to allow the players to do it too.