Enhanced Skills Slider

[jedra 11]

You don't need it on the clients if there are no AI running on them (i.e the player on a client can never group with AI). You will need it on the client you want to run the sliders from though.

Generally speaking, the troublesome AI usually live on the server, so I find that mostly it is those deadly dudes I am trying to calm down!

[1para{god-father} 105]

That is good news, thanks for that , Ill get on with testing for best values now, any recommendations Need AI to spot at a good distance but to have a longer firefight i.e Ai not to accurate in fire fights lots of pullets pinging around you.

[jedra 11]

It's hard to suggest good values - I use it just to tweak down the ai a little if things get a bit frustrating. Normally I concentrate on the accuracy settings but keep the overall skill higher. What I have found though is that things differ from mission to mission and situation to situation so rather than starting off by tweaking the AI, I just see how things go.

There are a number of missions that set the skills on the fly too - absolutely nothing I can do about that! It's OK if they do it during the units initialisation as I override that, but if they do it post initialisation as part of a script then ESS can't help - other than the fact you can set them back down again manually!

[old_painless 182]

I tried the version before the latest. I wanted to lower some of the skills, but AFAIR the sliders were not initialised at what the skills are currently set at. They were all at 1, AFAIR, which is probably not right since I am on Regular. So I was not really sure if setting a skill at 0.9 would lower the current skill, if that makes sense.

Has that changed in the new version, or is there some way to get that to work?

Cheers,

OP

[jedra 11]

Hi,

If you select a single unit, then the sliders will be set to that unit's current skill levels. If they are all at 1.0 (i.e the slider is all the way to the right) then that is what the unit's skills are. Often you will see this with friendly units.

If you selelect a group or 'all units' then the sliders will not be initialised as there are multiple units within the group/side and it would make no sense to set the sliders to an initial value.

In any case, if you set the sliders either by moving the sliders themselves or by using a random range or spread, the values are absolute. This means, if you set a slider to 0.76, that skill gets set to 0.76 regardless of what it was set to previously.

If you use the percentage function then the selected skill will increase or decrease by the percentage selected - in this case it is relative and not absolute.

Hope this helps!

[old_painless 182]

Sounds reasonable. Thanks for the quick reply. Will the percentage option apply to all units in a group or is it for single units only ?

[jedra 11]

Sounds reasonable. Thanks for the quick reply. Will the percentage option apply to all units in a group or is it for single units only ?

It will apply to all units/groups/individuals depending on what you currently have selected in the drop-down at the top. If you apply a 10% increase, this does two things;

1. Applies a 10% increase to the selected unit(s) to whatever the current values are.

2. If 'all units' is selected, any new units that are spawned for that side will immediately be given a 10% increase to their spawned values.

The best thing to do is experiment with your favourite mission before playing a big MP match - that way you have a better idea how the mission reacts to the changes.

[old_painless 182]

Sounds good, thanks very much for the clarifications. I have a very special situation in mind that I am going to test out :)

[1para{god-father} 105]

Just wanted to post a big thanks - been using this today and i really can see the change in AI and makes it a lot quicker to change on the fly !

I also was running in Regular whilst testing and a lot of AI where also showing skill all set to 1 , no idea but it must be the way I was spawning them in as it should put them in about .5 , so using this showed me why AI where so bloody good at killing us all on mission nights as they were all set to 1

Issue now resolve with this tool keep up the great work - - - - - - A must for Mission makers / admins

[jedra 11]

Just wanted to post a big thanks - been using this today and i really can see the change in AI and makes it a lot quicker to change on the fly !

I also was running in Regular whilst testing and a lot of AI where also showing skill all set to 1 , no idea but it must be the way I was spawning them in as it should put them in about .5 , so using this showed me why AI where so bloody good at killing us all on mission nights as they were all set to 1

Issue now resolve with this tool keep up the great work - - - - - - A must for Mission makers / admins

Thanks for the kind words - if this is what you are experiencing then the addon has achieved the objective I had in mind to begin with. It would be nice to see a feature like this in future versions of Arma with having to use an addon. It certainly gives admins the ability to make MP missions more fun and less frustrating as well as allowing solo players to tweak the difficulty with more precision. I'm not doing anything too fancy here - merely giving control of values that are already provided by the engine.

[old_painless 182]

Ok, had another playthrough with it in SP. I'm getting to like this a lot, my firefights seem more balanced now so that is something really nice.

One question about the map as I was a bit confused by this statement "ESS now has a map and briefly shows the location of units and group leaders selected": Even though I could select groups and units from the East listbox, there were no red circles on the map. As for my own blue team, we showed on the map, but is the map and what you select in the (West) listbox supposed to be connected to icons on the map. Eg. I select a unit in the list, will he then be highlighted on the map? It did not seem to change map icon, so seems that is not supposed to happen. Or did I not watch closely enough?

And the other way around: Can I click on a unit in the map and have him selected in the list (guess not)?

Thanks for any pointers on how to use the map.

cheers,

OP

[jedra 11]

Hi,

When you select a unit or a group from the drop-down, the map should zoom to that persons postion (or in the case of a group, the group leader). There will be an appropriately coloured dot at the postion which will vanish after about 10 seconds. I did this because I did not want to spoil it too much by giving away lots of enemy positions. I only tested in expert mode, so maybe in anything less, the units show up anyway - in this case the 'dot' may be obscured by a unit icon - will have to test it myself in normal and easy.

There is no reverse selection - i.e you can't select a unit on the map to change their sliders.

The map is really just to give the admin an indication of where the unit they are changing is if they don't want to change the skills of a whole side.

[old_painless 182]

Hi, thanks for the map insight.

I normally play on Regular which gives unit circular markers on the map, so they may very well have obscured the dots. I then tried using the tool on expert (where the unit circular markers are not shown) and I had a hard time seeing any dot. But not a big deal for me, the tool has given me a new way of interacting with Arma that is great

-OP

[jedra 11]

Cheers OP, If you're having a hard time with the dot, bear in mind that the map zooms to the unit's position, which will always be in the centre of the map. The idea was to give a general hint as to where the unit was for those that like to change skills at group/unit level.

I can make the dots bigger with a longer timer if it's causing an issue. If you normally play on normal then it's probably not too much of a problem anyway.

[Clarkey1 10]

Just tried this mod with WICT... It. Is. Amazing. Firefights are sustained for much longer, the enemy AI actually feel like they're putting down area fire to suppress now instead of killing my whole squad with magical one shot kill MG's.:p So far I've only tried all units, random spread with very low min-max settings. Looking forward to fighting against insurgents who don't seem to have been trained by SAS operators. Just the fact that I can change everything on the fly at the start of a mission is incredible. Thanks Jedra this changes the whole dynamic of firefights with such ease. It's really one of those mods that makes you wonder why this wasn't put into the game on release!:)

Stoked,

Clarkey

[jedra 11]

Thankyou for the kind words Clarkey1 - I am only glad that I could at last feed something back to the community that has given me so much.

Glad you are enjoying the mod - let's hope it's not needed for Arma 3!

[1para{god-father} 105]

I was going to start to use DAC and was wondering if there was any issues ?

[jedra 11]

I use it with DAC without a problem. So go for it! If you do experience any issues then be sure to let me know.

[1para{god-father} 105]

cheers :)

[orcinus 121]

I use it with DAC without a problem. So go for it! If you do experience any issues then be sure to let me know.

FYI, also seems to work perfectly with HAC + DAC :D

[meade95 0]

What are others finding is a good balance for "aiming accuacy" and "aiming shake" for enemy AI? Thanks. Is 0.33 to low?

[jedra 11]

I usually set things between 0.25 and 0.35. I might set some of the others a bit higher depending on what type of mission it is and what happened the last time I played it!

[orcinus 121]

@mead95: I tend to start with the default settings from asr_ai for the given enemy units, which are in the config.hpp.

Jedra's suggestions would be just as good a starting point but maybe involve a little more experimenting. Against Chedaki or Takiban I find asr's defaults pretty good but a little slow, so, e.g, I up the aiming speed by .05 - .1 depending.

Another example: Takiban don't seem to have NVGs in thomsonB's Flashpoint series & are hence rather useless at night, so a higher spot distance & better spot time make them more worthy opponents.

[styxx42 0]

Meade95

I found with my group that a variable between .25 to .45 gives a good spread.

Awesome addon NTW Jedra.

.33 is not to low for most instances IMO.

Just chiming in so others can as well.

We are weekend warriors as a bar you can measure by.

[meade95 0]

@ all - Thanks for advice on what settings to use -

Question - If you use the "select all units" and adjust for example all to 0.33 for accuracy - Can you still go adjust a specific unit or two back up to say 0.45. Or would the 0.33 be already set in stone?