Is this mechanic in the sequels? The fact that this happens feels unpolished to me. The CPU never makes that error, whereas it is quite easy for a human to make, and the solution to mitigate that is....rather unelegant.
Yes, it's in every game.
It makes a lot of sense to me how that mechanic works, it keeps you on your toes and forces you to make hard decisions when you have close to no health left. Either aim and try to shoot or heal, or try to end your turn and hope you can save your held-down unit with other attackers. It's also the second thing they teach you in the game, with the first being how to crouch behind sandbags, so it's not like they tried to hide it or make it confusing.
I'm not sure what you mean by error though, unless you're talking about how the CPU takes advantage of the fact that it can end its turn frame-perfectly.... well, it would be boring if the AI didn't try to abuse some of the advantages it has over a human player
By the way, the sequels interception fire is like this... in VC2, the interception fire does barely any damage, it's a complete joke. And abusing the aim system means you can completely ignore any tank interception fire and also abuse it by aim mashing and walking forward up to most ranges. It's hilarious at first but stops being funny when you realize how pathetic the challenge is.
VC3 actually has the highest level of interception fire damage in the series (not including pre-patch VC1 PC or the VC1 mod), and has good balance with it in that damage that's shot at your back is incredibly damaging to prevent just running by units carelessly. There's ways to mitigate this with Anti-Intercept potentials and such but overall I think they did the best they could to make it a threat in the game and it shows.
Now if you want to talk about inelegant solutions to problems, infinite and immediate respawning enemies is about as inelegant as you can get... no thanks that this strategy is annoyingly abused in 2 and 3 by the CPU and in
that chapter of VC1.
Thanks for the tips!
I played the 3rd Skirmish twice on Normal using different teams and tactics, it was really fun and challenging.
Great to hear. Using the Skirmishes to practice is smart.
Man, writing all this up makes me miss how elegant the tank/APC interception fire in VC1 is. How it works:
1) Small Tank guns can only fire from the front, short but deadly radius and good range.
2) Medium Tank guns can only fire from the back, but they have bigger range, radius and damage.
3) Heavy Tank guns have a dedicated gun on the front that has the same range as the Small Tank, but they also have a heavy separate gun (that you can kill separately) that can turn 360 degrees and shoot anything in range with deadly power.
4) Tank Destroyer guns have the same gun as the Small tank but they hit harder.
5) Dromedarius guns are the same as the Small Tank but their range is incredibly short.
6) APCs have a top-mounted gun that can fire in 270 degree radius that doesn't include the back. More range than any other tank gun.
It all got trashed in the sequels...