Whats the best way to get your units from point A to point B, using a road or dirt road in this case, over a pretty good distance... I zoom in and spend time ordering MARCH from waypoints to waypoints along the road, as close and on the road as possible, but every time they get off road and stuck... it's friendly area, no enemies likely... isn't there a way to simplely command a road movement from 1 point to another, staying on the road?

Road waypoints seem to command a drive to the centreline and thus a loop at each WP.

This is undesirable on multi-lane roads, but ok for narrow ones, also undesirable more strongly for wheeled vehicles than for ones capable of pivot steering.

There is a balance of control with multiple short legs, and consistency/behaviour with no WP enroute.

The intent is surely favouring control, but behaviour isn't matching intent.

Isn't it shift and click to pin the route to,the road. That way magnum you can pretty much make 1 waypoint at or near the destination and the route auto generates along roads and tracks.

ya, I use the shift and click and see it pop to the road... but still have problems... just can't believe we can't get the AI to move down a road without issues after all these years with the program.

Well, Shift & Click should make it much easier, provided that your scenario/map has a nav mesh. We now have one programmer working almost full-time on smarter behavior of computer-controlled units and we're gradually seeing improvements in this area. Nav meshes are the fundament of much of the improved behavior so I can but encourage their use.


That said, I still don't recommend super-long routes. I mean, It's okay to create one that isn't connected to a unit just so to utilize the pathfinding function and look for the best route, but if you have the time for it, my recommendation is to segmentize the route into shorter legs of only a few hundred meters. The advantage is that when you later want to create a decision point and branch the route into alternative paths because you anticipate some trouble you'll have plenty of waypoints to choose from. It also makes it much easier to change formations, spacing, travel speeds for selected parts of the route.
If your route was some 15km long, your only option would be to delete it in its entirety and redo the whole planning, just this time with an additional waypoint somewhere in the middle.

With Shift+click it is however pretty convenient to plot a long route even if you divide it into multiple shorter routes.

Well the other thing is that in both pictures the Bradleys and M1s have encountered an abatis (an obstacle created by felling trees).

So you aren't just "driving down a road" but driving down a road, encountering an obstacle and hoping that the AI can plot a bypass route.

Units still require supervision and "help" / "guidance" as required.

Keep in mind that in reality an abatis "done right" will block a road with felled trees over a length of at least 100, better 200 meters, with a few anti tank mines added to the mix to prevent simple bypasses. Which is something that you can create in SB Pro by placing many abatis segments along a road, and feel free to mine the area with a cluster of minefields of minimum size left and right. Oh, and to make any sense at all you'd also need to pick a terrain theme that makes forest travel real miserable with low traction, high resistance, and maybe large boulders thrown into the mix for good measure.

Thanks... but the mission at hand, the mission maker states that enemy contact is unlikely up to the bridge... and really, on that map, only gives you one option...to drive down the dirt road, with forest on both sides... their is no obstacles until a tank or unit goes off road and makes one. In hindsight, the mission maker probably should of just put us closer for start or more ways to get to the battle, for some reason he didn't...just want to get all my units in position at the bridge then start the battle movements.

Well, I can only comment on the aspects of modeling & simulation, not on the individual scenarios.

In principle I think it is legitimate to plant false information into a mission briefing to illustrate how perishable tactical information can be (e.g. reconnaissance results are three hours old before presented in the briefing).

Then there's always the question whether a scenario is closer to simulating an actual scenario where, indeed, nothing may happen for an extended time, or if you want to entertain or train and therefore start the scenario no more than two minutes before the actual action starts.

Well perhaps there are no visible obstacles at the start but that abatis was certainly created in the Mission Editor.

Vehicles going "off road" do not create them.

I'd say that obstacle was already there, its just that is only becomes visible when you encounter it.

If you zoom in on the map, there will be a green "squiggle" visible once you run into the abatis.