ARMA 2: OA beta build 85101

[jt445 10]

Sounds like a feature, they fixed shooting through glass, I suppose they solved AI shooting through other penetratable materials.

As long as the AI has seen you before, over the wall, or next to the wall etc, it seems fine.

If it seems not fine, best create a ticket with repro mission.

This has nothing to with shooting through glass... they are shooting through brick / concrete walls. It looks absurd. Take for example a bunch of soldiers inside the mosque in Zargabad city shooting at the walls of the mosque to try and kill somebody on the street. When I go outside to see who they were shooting at, I see nobody.

Even worse as I stated they are running out of ammo. On top of that there has killing friendlies due to the excessive gunfire.

Definitely a bug. Anybody else see this?

[stk2008 14]

Yeah this is silly I see this a lot

Sometimes I even see the MG gunners sprayin 180 degree radius singlehandedly Rambo- style

(Happens when they´re so eager to shoot that they start firing while still shifting position).

Wouldn´t count that as a bug, it can be annoying when they hit teammates while doing so, though

[metalcraze 290]

This has nothing to with shooting through glass... they are shooting through brick / concrete walls. It looks absurd.

Reality is absurd?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKhMOfaYwvE (watch from 2 minute and onwards)

Take for example a bunch of soldiers inside the mosque in Zargabad city shooting at the walls of the mosque to try and kill somebody on the street. When I go outside to see who they were shooting at, I see nobody.

AI doesn't know there was nobody there when you went outside. But they won't shoot unless they saw an enemy.

Even worse as I stated they are running out of ammo. On top of that there has killing friendlies due to the excessive gunfire.

This is the only thing that needs to be balanced. They shouldn't spend more than X secs shooting at an enemy unless they have a direct line of sight.

Edited October 5, 2011 by metalcraze

[On_Sabbatical 11]

metalcraze is so right ...

Besides,i hate the fact that AI shoot things with inadequate weapons,like shooting statics using rifles or infantry using rpg and smaw ... but i guess this has been mentioned a lot of times before.

[jt445 10]

Reality is absurd?

This is the only thing that needs to be balanced. They shouldn't spend more than X secs shooting at an enemy unless they have a direct line of sight.

The behavior I saw was several instances of a group of soldiers or tank MGs shooting at a wall for a few minutes. The don't have line of sight of an enemy. The most obvious of this was the Zargabad mosque example I mentioned earlier. They seem to ignore everything except being locked into combat with the wall. ;)

Sounds like the shoot-through-windows code was tweaked a little too much. :)

[Dwarden 1125]

you sure they weren't using the supress ?

that work this way or it's w/o any sight of enemy nearby

in that case please setup CIT ticket with good and simple repro mission

[jt445 10]

you sure they weren't using the supress ?

that work this way or it's w/o any sight of enemy nearby

They do a good job of suppressing... I was suppressed several times trying to hide in a building. That works well.

In this case they believe there is an enemy behind a wall or building but they are using small arms to attack the wall. Tanks will use the coaxial and loader machineguns also. I heard sustained MG fire for several minutes each time it happened.

Is it intended behavior that AI units will destroy obstacles / walls in order to kill an enemy hiding behind them? That would be cool if it was the intention, but those units who do not have the capability of penetrating the wall should not be firing. Those units that do (tanks, RPG soldiers perhaps) should use the cannon and RPGs, respectively.

On an unrelated note, I saw that there was a fix several builds ago where AA soldiers and vehicles were only supposed to attack ground targets when "desperate". Is there a way of preventing AA missiles from attacking ground targets at all? This goes for planes as well.

[Tonci87 163]

There are some serious AI issues in this Beta.

1: the binoculars. AI lukes to look through them a lot! I have to remove them manually

2: Their stance. It seems that AI really likes to stand up in a firefight instead of hitting the ground or keeping low.

3: Movement under contact. It seems that AI likes to totally ignore movement commands when fighting the enemy. If I order them to move somewhere, they will rather stay where they are until they have killed the enemy they are currently engaging. Teying to break contact has become almost impossible.

[.kju 3245]

So noone can get his act together and put together a simple demo mission of the binocular issue? Sad. :|

[Rough Knight 9]

I havent noticed the binoc issue. In all honesty, IRL you would pull out the Binocs if something is 200-300 metres away and you have identification issues. You would often look before you pull the trigger. Don't know about standing up looking..probably from behind cover.

Like I mentioned...with this beta I havent noticed anything concerning the binocs that I have considered abnormal...I might be uneducated though : )

It's probably not all that unrealistic.

[msy 22]

So noone can get his act together and put together a simple demo mission of the binocular issue? Sad. :|

When I play Sick1's Seal Team Six series the issue of overusing binocular happens a lot.

[.kju 3245]

Simple demo mission

5chars

[humvee28 10]

I´ve got big Problems with recruited (spawned) AI and mounting / dismounting Vehicles, especially with small Spaces around the Vehicle, in various MP User Missions (WIT, Domi AI). Sometimes they´re can´t get in, and if i made it, often they´re can´t get out, even with alot of Space around the exit Points.

I´ve tried to reproduce it in the Editor for a Repro many many times, but i can´t. :(

Has someone else observed that Problem too?

[Tonci87 163]

OK I have a small Repro Mission to (hopefully) show the AI quirks

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20864860/AI%2520test.Takistan.pbo

Follow these steps:

Proceed on the road

Half your squad will take out its Binos once they notice the enemy. There is a good chance that some of them won´t join the fight but will remain with their Binos on their Eyes.

There is a small wall along the road. Order your men individually to positions on that wall. Notice how awfully long they take if they are under fire.

You will propably notice that your AI likes to stand up A LOT during the firefight

[suma 8]

Half your squad will take out its Binos once they notice the enemy. There is a good chance that some of them won´t join the fight but will remain with their Binos on their Eyes.

Did not see this yet. Once two of my men briefly looked through binos, but soon they took weapons and fought as expected. Perhaps there is something missing? Some mods used? What are your difficulty settings?

If the problem exists, I would like to check it and fix it, but for it I need to see it first, so that I can debug it and understand what is causing it.

[Tonci87 163]

I´ll make a video.

Mods used: ACE, ASR_AI,

Problem disappears without the Beta

Difficulty setting: Veteran

Friendly skill: 0.89

enemy skill: 0.8

[suma 8]

Mods used: ACE, ASR_AI,

Can you try if the problem shows without mods as well? Mods modifying AI could easily cause this.

No need to make a video, it is not that I do not believe you that you have the problem, I need the problem on my computer to debug it, and I cannot debug a video or a screenshot.

[Tonci87 163]

I tried it without Mods, but this was even more crazy.

Differences: The spotting distance was much lower. I had to observe the enemy through my ACOG. After my charackter reported unknown [...] my guys took out their binos, and keept looking through them after identifiying the enemy so no change there.

After I went a little nearer with them, everybody exept from the MG guy took out his Pistol! and started to shoot at the enemy (distance 400 meters).

I know that you believe me, I just think that a Video will maybe better showcase what I mean. Uploading, 45 min left (I have a terrible upload speed)

EDIT: OK here it is

4B4JnCnTBhA

Notice how they all take out their binos, some of them even look in the wrong direction. On the first try (didn´t record it) one of the guys looked through his binos during the whole firefight. Notice how they and the Enemy really like to stand somewhere in the open. Especially unusefull if the MG does so. He can´t handle the recoil and only wastes his ammo.

See how long it takes to get to their positions, this was much faster in previous Betas.

Any Ideas? :(

Edited October 7, 2011 by Tonci87

[fabrizio_t 58]

1: the binoculars. AI lukes to look through them a lot! I have to remove them manually.

Personally i started noticing this massive binoculars use since patch build 84467.

Not really new.

Hope it helps.

[Brainbug 10]

I don't now if this fits better here or in the other beta thread, but when I tried Tonci97's AI test mission with the 85248, I saw a different behavior (retried several times, pretty similar every time):

The M60 gunner properly uses his M60 and goes prone for shooting, only after it is empty he switches to the G17.

The other guys however keep standing up (they only go prone when I go prone, but they keep standing when I kneel) and don't shoot. With a move order down the road similar like the one in your video, they get a little closer to the enemies. At some point, I think at 500m distance to enemies, they all pull out their G17 and start shooting, and they also start changing stances by themselves. Only the grenadier uses his rifle sometimes, but only for the 203 nades, not for shooting, and he switches back to pistol after firing a nade.

They all move very hesitatingly when in combat, also the hiding order is not followed quickly but takes ages if at all (I didn't have patience to wait long enough even with 4x time speedup).

No use of binoculars at all.

Here, I made a video (16MB, X.264, low quality to keep file size small, and sry I don't have a Youtube account): http://hfd.de/users/brainbug/arma2/aitest3.avi

(I had put them in column formation just before video start)

Suma, I know you said videos are useless for you; but if the behaviour changed between the betas significantly, then obviously something of the (limited number of) code changes is responsible for it, so maybe you can get an idea what you did in the code, in case that change was accidently.

Edited October 8, 2011 by Brainbug

[.kju 3245]

Made a ticket here:

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/25266

There is certainly a change in binocular use, but this demo mission shows meaningful use.

Tonci87 you have to focus on the issue at hand and cut out all the unrelated comments.

Yes there are other AI issues, but it doesn't help at all mixing them up.

The main issue is the pistol bug here. Followed by the slow movement (stop and go) by combat behavior.

---------- Post added at 08:20 ---------- Previous post was at 08:10 ----------

@ Brainbug

Your points are to be found in default AI behavior I think.

The MG is the lead, so the others follow him.

If you don't want that, you need to order them to behave otherwise (engage at will).

The pistol bug makes the other AI not being in effective combat range and therefore not fire.

If you want them to lay down, you have to order them. By default is "follow my stance".

Which is player standing/kneel => AI standing, player laying down => AI prone. Is that a bug - no idea.

They move very slowly due to combat behavior (automatically switched to when under fire).

I think this is often not meaningful and makes AI a lot less combat effective.

And there is no player command nor scripting command to override that behavior. Very bad.

Take cover is not working since OA as the system changed AFAIK and BI did not implement the command again.

See: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/findCover (the scripting equivalent to the group leader command)

Stealth mode unfortunately has only little effect since arma compared to OFP.

We have tickets for all issues in the CIT - if/when BI addresses your points, is the question here.

The binocular issue still needs a proper demo mission that actually shown undesired behavior.

Edited October 8, 2011 by .kju [PvPscene]

[fabrizio_t 58]

Made a ticket here:

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/25266

Take cover is not working since OA as the system changed AFAIK and BI did not implement the command again.

See: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/findCover (the scripting equivalent to the group leader command

Yes, FindCover was removed. There were engine-related reasons for that, see: http://dev-heaven.net/issues/2016 for reference.

However taking cover mechanics does work in my experience, even with some limitations such as slowness and inability to discriminate between soft and hard cover.

Edited October 8, 2011 by fabrizioT