Oh my god, what's the AI on?
Key to a successful RTS is how the game mechanics actually work when you’re playing. It’s all fine and dandy having a great resource structure and loads of cool units, but if the actual combat and manoeuvre part of the game sucks, you’re not going to hang around very long. In this respect, Joint Task Force plays a good game of war. We’ve got the now obligatory ‘fog of war’, which seems a bit odd given today’s real-time satellite technology but then, if we knew where all the bad guys were all the time, how would Joint Task Force be any fun?
Also, Joint Task Force sees areas of each map initially inaccessible until later in the mission with a new section opening up as you progress. Many of the missions start out with just one objective but then the situation may change and you have to nip off on a quick errand to rescue stranded refugees or a downed pilot. So often you’ll find the map you started on is actually pretty huge which is fine if you’re doing well but a pain if you have to call in reinforcements. You’ll either have to just let them slog halfway over the map to get to the action or you’ll have to keep moving your ‘base camp’ of support vehicles. Although this adds a nice tactical edge as you need to think about defending your base camp, it does break up the flow of the combat side of the game.
Click for larger imageBut the stop-start nature of the game is nothing to worry about, not compared to the path finding which, to be frank, is absolutely bloody annoying in the extreme. I’ve two nice new 19” TFT panels here and I’ve never come closer to ramming my mouse through one than when Joint Task Force has one of its unit juggling debacles. Seriously, you’d think that half the vehicles are driven by Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder though given the current trend in sexual equality, it’s just as likely they’re being driven by women.
You get a clue in one of the early Mogadishu levels as, instead of just driving up the roads in the village as any normal driver would, your Humvees go careering off through fences, trees and telegraph poles like demented mother in a 4x4 who’s late on the school run. Sure, I can see that the Ai is just taking the shortest route as the crow flies, but in a game with a strong humanitarian story-line, the destruction caused by the path finding is worse than that caused by the fights themselves.
It gets really good when you have a few tanks thrown in, and especially fun when you’re in a built up area or, as with the Bosnia levels, surrounded by hills and valleys. Now unless you want to be individually controlling each vehicle in the heat of a battle, the best thing to do is group them using CTRL+a number key. And that’s when your problems really start.
Click for larger imageRather than do the sensible thing and organise your group formation according to vehicle strengths, speed and terrain, Joint Task Force just let’s everything carry on at its own pace. So if you put a TOW launching Humvee in with your tanks the Humvee will go screaming off ahead and likely get obliterated before your tanks have even turned around. So knowing this, you group similar vehicles together instead… but things are still just as bad. Even though everything now moves at roughly the same speed, the AI superbly causes gridlock at every opportunity. Just turning your tanks around in a relatively open space is a nightmare as the same AI controls each tank driver and they all try and do the same thing. Stick them in a built up area and it’s mayhem as everyone tries to turn left at once, instantly getting in each other’s way. Often you’ll have to intervene, selecting individual units and backing them out of the way to then let the AI turn around.
In the main, Joint Task Force focuses on contacts in tight, close environments, be they urban areas or enclosed valleys. Can the AI figure out how to get vehicles to just drive up a bloody road? Obviously not as Humvees going careering over roadside ditches, tanks trundle alongside the empty road knocking over trees and poles and everyone is constantly jostling for position, stopping as the lead tank has cut them up or, in a disturbingly high number of cases, either getting stuck or just giving up.
Click for larger imageThe upshot of this is a major hit on the gameplay and I’ll give you an example to explain. I know the enemy has three tanks up ahead and, because he blew my scout helicopter away, I know he has an attack chopper up ahead too. So, my tactic is to go in with my four tanks and support them with the two anti-aircraft tanks which will make short work of the chopper. Once the enemy tanks are gone, I’ll mop up the infantry with my own squaddies and the anti-aircraft tanks. Great.
So I group the tanks and AA together (the AA should make short work of any anti-tank infantry too) and set them off into battle. Except my one AA tanks get in the way of one of my M1A2 tanks which in turn block off my other AA tank and now all three are stuck as none of them can rotate to get out of the way… and the AI is so dumb that it can’t reverse the last AA tank which would let the other two get sorted… and meanwhile my three other tanks are trundling off to oblivion in the form of chopper and rocket propelled grenade death.
Click for larger imageBut don’t think this is just limited to vehicles because it happens with your foot soldiers too. In Bosnia there’s loads of small footpaths which are only accessible to troops and often it’s handy to send in some snipers to take care of the enemy soldiers before sending in some guys with RPGs to take out the SAM launcher or whatever… except that the RPG guys can’t actually walk past the snipers on the path, even though the path looks wide enough to drive a Humvee down… so you have to file the RPG guys out, then pull out the snipers before filing the RPG guys back in, during which time the enemy has reinforced the position and starts chopping the RPG guys to bits making the whole exercise a waste of time.
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