Opportunity Fire
Hi:
Here a suggestion I'll like to toss out.
Presently, we all use the tactic of moving alternate units to draw down the op fire. This works because we all know that the unit moved will be the one fired upon.
I suggest changing this routine, so when op fire is triggered, the most dangerous unit with the highest probability of kill is fired upon.
The algorithm would probably be:
(A) Call Op fire routine, which is now does the following:
(B) Create list of all targets.
(C) Create sub list of targets with potential to harm itself.
(D) If list (C) is empty, then use entire list of (B) is used for steps (E) through (I). List (B) can never be empty because it always has at least 1 target - the target that triggered the op fire. If list (C) is not empty then proceed to use list (C) for the next steps (E) through (I).
(E) Asses risk from each target in list based on severity of damage and likely hood of hit. This assessment looks at the risk of the target scoring a damage (ex. based on speed, fire control, position, distance, type of weapon, #times target fired at unit, target suppression level, etc.) For illustrative purposes: If the target is out of range and thus can not harm unit, then it may have a high consequence of damage, but a zero chance of it. So it would be risk ranked to zero. A target that has the range, but is at a high rate of speed with a low fire control, and hasn't fire at unit, has perhaps a moderate probability of hit => moderate probability x high damage = risk rank of 70 (scale 0-100). A target that is stationary, fired once at unit, not suppressed, within range, has a gun that can easily destroy it could get a risk rank of 100 as an example. I believe the raw data to make this assessment already exist within the system.
(F) Asses probability of kill against each target. Same routine used in (E), except, now units are switch.
(G) Apply objective function (in this case it could be the product of (F) and (E)). All cases where neither side can score a hit are eliminated (rank 0). Objective function may incorporate a threshold, where the results have to exceed a certain value, otherwise it may not be preferred that it doesn't fire.
(H) Prioritize list, highest result from objective function at top of list.
(I) Return op fire to target on top of list.
The expected result from this revised routine would mean that if you pop unit one up. Target will look around and take the opportunity to fire at the unit you popped up, or it may fire at some other unit which it considers more dangerous. If you pop a second unit up, it may fire at it or it may not or it may fire at the first unit that popped up, or fire again at the unit it fired at before, depending on which one it thinks is more dangerous. The more time the unit fires at a target, the more likely it will fire at it again (remembering that this target was rated as most dangerous so far). So you would have to think twice about popping a unit into view to draw op fire, especially if it is a low value unit (eg. scout car, light tank, etc.).
One could pop a unit up to draw fire then drop back down again to break the lock, but that is no different than the way op fire works now, except that the more the units pops up, the higher its speed, and thus arises the potential that it may lock on to some more promising target instead of the one that popped up.
I would be interested in any comments.
Thanks
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