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Tactically speaking, the AI isn't too bad actually. Last night, our smaller force attempted to draw the enemy out of a superior position into a prepared killzone. Did they come at us? Nope. They moved back into defilade, keeping their defensive position, with a handful of units returning fire. The only problem was that they looked retarded in doing so because their movement looked unnatural.

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Honestly, they have no idea what defilade or killzones are, but yeah, they can be quite effective in the right situations.

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Well they do know what killzones are. When it comes to killzones being a danger to them. If they know the enemy is firing at that zone they will never run there. And when they are in danger or stealth mode they will always take a route with bushes and trees instead of an open field.

The problem is AI doesn't know how to set up effective killzone themselves. Now if BIS was to make them flank around you in groups of no less than two people - it will create a working illusion of tactics from AI. Or rather not just an illusion - since it will be more effective too instead of separate guys being sent to kill random targets.

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Outside of combat, when given decisions, squad leaders are actually quite smart. They stick to high ground and they stick to forested/covered areas where ever possible. I wouldn't even be suprised if they recognized what a defilade was if it were created by differences in elevation.

On the squad level, The problems occur when they are in combat. The squad tries to advacne far too quickly instead of staying in cover until they are 99% sure they are not in danger, kind of like a human. Of course this might break certain types of missions so there should be a easily definable aggresiveness for each ai group. On 100% they will act as they do now, advaning at all costs. I at 0% they will stick to cover until they are absolutey sure the threat has been eliminated.

And then there are individual problems that have been mentined before. It doesn't matter whether a squad picks the optimal approach to an objective if individual ai don't know how to properly utilize the advantage this path gives them. Ai doesn't know how to use cover to fully hide themsleves, and don't recognize when they should be hiding instead of shooting even when rounds are snapping right by his head... and these really hurt them in fire fights, and is one of the biggest reasons fire fights are so short and unrealistic in a2.

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Well they do know what killzones are. When it comes to killzones being a danger to them. If they know the enemy is firing at that zone they will never run there. And when they are in danger or stealth mode they will always take a route with bushes and trees instead of an open field.

From my perspective, only sometimes. I have seen many a time, that when you establish a good base of fire and you are in the most dominant position that the enemy will still try to attack you. They are usually picked off, as the groups members only expose themself individually or at random intervals until they are caught in open ground or the math fits and they happen to all be caught red handed.

This can be said from gaining the high ground, that enemies below you will still try to attack and advance until they cut down to very small numbers or just an individual. They may have some cover, concealment or anything else, but they still try to advance instead of breaking contact, moving or using objects in a more appropriate fashion.

It's like they are on automatic go-mode, more options for them, a tactical-baseline of scripted ways to do things would improve them by a mile. Flowchart time?

The ones that hit and run, distract and 'cause havok do the best job in these situations, but sometimes when they are moving position or fleeing they do so in your visual field. I've never seen enemies slow crawl out of a situation, turn 180 and get out of there, distract or bait with any kind of multiple engagement, hide for a time period before moving, get a narrow angle and wait out, I've never seen them split up to get angles on you, move as buddy teams or any kind of real military maneuvre (except the obvious flank, advance, etc).

It's prone, shoot, wait, shoot, get up, run in random direction, turn shoot, crouched, scan, wait, get up, run.

Sometimes they retreat or move at really disadvantaged angles, and it just puts you in the 'click and shoot' frame of mind because they turn into dominos. Headless chickens...

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@Rye: as I and other people said already that's because AI tries to advance way too fast at you - but not only that - AI leader sends individual members of its squad after you.

So of course it can quickly end in a disaster.

BIS just needs to implement three things

1. AI keeping the distance away from the enemy. If the enemy has bigger numbers and advances - AI should fall back keeping the distance. That's what humans will do to avoid dangerous CQB and losses.

2. AI sending attackers only in groups. Human leader will never send a lone soldier to kill someone when he knows there are many enemies out there.

3. AI must advance only either when the enemy is being pushed back and moving away OR when AI is absolutely sure nobody is shooting anymore at its squad. Humans do that.

I bet all these 3 things aren't hard to do. There are already some basics for them in the game.

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2. AI sending attackers only in groups. Human leader will never send a lone soldier to kill someone when he knows there are many enemies out there.

I'm pretty sure I saw Suma say somewhere (alliteration lol) that the programming of the AI is always to send at least two individuals after each enemy. Doesn't mean they work together, though.

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I'm pretty sure I saw Suma say somewhere (alliteration lol) that the programming of the AI is always to send at least two individuals after each enemy. Doesn't mean they work together, though.

They usually do. So you have twos and twos milling about. There is no squad cohesion. In prolongued battles I have seen leaders roam around alone because they send their squad to hunt invisible enemies half a map away. Squads should always stick together, and if at all, split up into fireteams and not combat pairs. Buddy pairs should also stick closer together: often they have hundreds of meters and multiple buildings between them, even if advancing against the same enemy.

We´ll see what the announced AI improvements bring. I don´t expect much, though. After the advances of Arma 2, it´ll be difficult to improve. The AI of Arma is inherently limited by the system it employs, apparently. Can´t really work around that, except by replacing the system.

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Just make it so they can't snipe me with an AK47 in less than a second when im hundred meters away.

The accuracy and the spotting capabilities of the AI are just overwhelming.

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I'm pretty sure I saw Suma say somewhere (alliteration lol) that the programming of the AI is always to send at least two individuals after each enemy. Doesn't mean they work together, though.

I often saw AI leader send just one guy. And yeah - even if AI sends several guys they should work as a group. It shouldn't be hard to do. They should stick together at least.

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I often saw AI leader send just one guy. And yeah - even if AI sends several guys they should work as a group. It shouldn't be hard to do. They should stick together at least.

+1, definitely.

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I think the great solution will be for BIS to expand the colourcoded team concept for AI. Basically colour coded teams should be treated like buddy/fireteams (meaning they will have the leading guy).

So basically when AI leader has a squad AI leader should spread it into these smaller colour coded teams (depending on the number of soldiers in the squad - 2,3,4 people teams) and then they should act as a separate entities (with their leader) that can take care of themselves within the squad but still following the squad leader orders.

Like buddyteam / fireteam leader should only give orders to target someone (as in aim at him, not chase him) and return to group to keep it together if someone is far and that's it - simply to move and flank together. While squad leader is responsible for manouvers and main target designation - like he is now.

Yeah it may sound complicated at first but think about it. The AI leader will be giving orders to these smaller groups within his squad and due to the nature of ArmA AI already knowing how to flank you may easily have the visibility (and more) of AI tactics because these small groups will be flanking around you while their members will stick together.

Sure they will still not be as good as humans but they will be attacking in force thus survivability++

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How much CPU power one would need to mimikry human situational awareness with AI? How big is the impact with many AI's and AI teams/groups? How far one can go with dynamic/'kinetic' scenarious so the player won't ever notice spawning or scripting tricks + tweaks? What about xaitment products - do/will they work in A3 or is it licensing agreement only for VBS2?

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How much CPU power one would need to mimikry human situational awareness with AI?

It's impossible to acheive, even if we had unlimited CPU power.

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The accuracy and the spotting capabilities of the AI are just overwhelming.

Would newbs stop posting about this, please?

You don't call the AI good spotters when they can't see past 300m out of combat. You just don't.

It's complicated, and the sheer volume of uninformed whining from sissies may have an effect on BIS' decisions. That would be a disaster.

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I saw that BI talks a lot about CQB AI,but I hope that isn't the only thing they'll focus regarding AI.Those little brains inside the npcs should also drive&pilot acceptable or at least better than A2.

Things like drive well on roads or if it becomes dangerous go off-road,keeping convoy formation,detour/avoid more easily obstacles that are in front of them.Basically going from point A to point B without hitting too many people/objects on the way.:p

On flying,I hope they manage to stay more alive.This includes not hitting trees or tall buildings(if there are any on Limnos),if they have another chopper in their team they should be able to fly in formation well.

Regarding choppers this is very important,have the AI able to hold position when engaging targets.Attack choppers keep a safe distance between them and the threat.

Right now in A2CO they just dilly-danging around the battlefield and being shot to pieces.

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Aye. It would be great if pilots learned about popping in and out from behind hills when attacking, instead of just flying around.

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Currently the AI seems to rely a lot on vertical cover and almost not (or not at all?) on horizontal cover. Let me explain what I mean with horizontal and vertical cover. Vertical cover is a corner of a house or a large rock. Behind it you are covered, to fire you move or lean left and right. Horizontal cover is terrain, you go low to be covered and move up to fire. If the AI uses cover it is mostly of the vertical type, primary world objects. The problem is that such cover in Arma is actually quite rare. The AI loves to go behind trees, bushes or poles. But these provide almost no protection at all, the AI is still easily shot. The only working vertical cover is houses, high walls and large rocks, which leaves the AI with very little actual working cover to use across the complete map. One solution might be to write an AI that relies more on horizontal cover (where you can hide low and shoot over), such as low walls and most importantly the actual terrain. The terrain provides a large number of covered positions, the AI would benefit greatly if it was able to recognize and use them. Even better would of course be if more terrain detail is introduced, such as ditches along streets, to give the AI (and the player) even more opportunity to find cover and firing positions. So the basically: AI less dependent on world objects for cover, which are relatively rare, and more on the actual topography, which is plentiful.

A game I would like to positively mention in regard to this is Steel Beasts Pro PE. I think the gameplay of playing with tanks in Steel Beasts and infantry in Arma is remarkably similar. Please note that I am not comparing Steel Beasts’ tanks to Arma’s tanks, but to Arma’s infantry. They have a similar amount of simulation and abstraction on the unit you play (tank or soldier respectively), similar controls to move and shoot and landscapes of similar scale. Steel Beasts does not have a high level AI that has complex path finding nor can flank, but its AI units have quite good individual combat drills. The AI in Steel Beasts does not recognise vertical cover, it won’t hide behind houses or trees. But it makes extensive use of horizontal cover. The tanks in SB are able to find terrain where they can only expose their top sensors to observe, their turrets to fire or move back down to reload completely protected. It is actually quite impressive and makes fire fights very interesting. Of course tank warfare cannot be compared 1 to 1 with infantry warfare, but some principles are still the same. And for demonstrating AI using horizontal cover in large scale terrain with large number of units, Steel Beasts deserves to be mentioned.

One concept I would like the AI to understand is that of fire superiority. The AI should be able to make a good guess at which side currently holds the advantage in firepower. Only if the friendly units in the vicinity are able to put out enough fire to suppress the enemy units in the vicinity, should own units initiate flanking moves. No movement without fire superiority. If clear fire superiority cannot be achieved, the AI should remain in covered positions and request fire support if available (reinforcements, mortars, artillery, air support etc.). If fire support is not available or fire superiority can still not be achieved over the enemy, AI should switch to the defensive and hold the current position. Of course assault type movement options should also be provided in the editor to let AI perform assaults under fire in situations the mission designers finds appropriate.

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Would newbs stop posting about this, please?

You don't call the AI good spotters when they can't see past 300m out of combat. You just don't.

It's complicated, and the sheer volume of uninformed whining from sissies may have an effect on BIS' decisions. That would be a disaster.

I would be deeply dissapointed if BI listened to these complaints. Ai need a major boost when spotting things in open terrain…

But what about complex terrain like forests. I think the ai spots to easily there. I don’t mean they cheat, or see through bushes/trees, I just mean that they don’t get confused like a human would when looking into these areas. The time it takes a human to see someone in open terrain can be half as much as that needed to spot someone in a relatively populated terrain. Even if they aren’t hiding behind something. Just compare this (open) to this (slightly complex). there isn't even that many bushes in the second and still i find it much harder to spot the enemy. But for an ai this does not apply. No matter what terrain you are in they see you just as well as long as you are exposed. I think this could use improvement not only to make ai have more realistic capabilities but to also make terrain have a bigger impact on game play and tactics, even when involving the ai.

Currently the AI seems to rely a lot on vertical cover and almost not (or not at all?) on horizontal cover. Let me explain...

...So the basically: AI less dependent on world objects for cover, which are relatively rare, and more on the actual topography, which is plentiful.

Yes it would be nice for the ai to use the topography of the map more to their advantage... but I think this would probably be very hard to do. And more micro terrain would be gold. And ai place themselves behind both vertical and horizontal cover, as you call them, its just there is more vertical cover available And for some reason ai doesn't like sharing those low stone walls, resulting in one or 2 taking cover and the rest staying out in the open. And i'll repeat this even though I've said it many times before: Ai needs to actually use cover. duck in and pop out based on incoming fire. simply placing yourself behind it to present a smaller target is comparable to going prone in the open... in fact it can be argued that going prone is actually better. the advantage of hard cover is the fact that you can duck fully behind it and prevent yourself from being shot. the ai don't get this advantage though because they never fully hide behind it when they should.

One concept I would like the AI to understand is that of fire superiority. The AI should be able to make a good guess at which side currently holds the advantage in firepower. Only if the friendly units in the vicinity are able to put out enough fire to suppress the enemy units in the vicinity, should own units initiate flanking moves. No movement without fire superiority. If clear fire superiority cannot be achieved, the AI should remain in covered positions and request fire support if available (reinforcements, mortars, artillery, air support etc.). If fire support is not available or fire superiority can still not be achieved over the enemy, AI should switch to the defensive and hold the current position. Of course assault type movement options should also be provided in the editor to let AI perform assaults under fire in situations the mission designers finds appropriate.

This is essential for the ai to be any good on a squad level as well as behave realistically. In the editor you should be able to set a groups aggressiveness on a scale of 1 to 10 lets say. This would define how safe they have to feel before advancin. at level 1 they will wait until they are taking very little fire until advancing. at level 10 they will advance at all costs.

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I would be deeply dissapointed if BI listened to these complaints. Ai need a major boost when spotting things in open terrain…

But what about complex terrain like forests. I think the ai spots to easily there. I don’t mean they cheat, or see through bushes/trees, I just mean that they don’t get confused like a human would when looking into these areas. The time it takes a human to see someone in open terrain can be half as much as that needed to spot someone in a relatively populated terrain. Even if they aren’t hiding behind something. Just compare this (open) to this (slightly complex). there isn't even that many bushes in the second and still i find it much harder to spot the enemy. But for an ai this does not apply. No matter what terrain you are in they see you just as well as long as you are exposed. I think this could use improvement not only to make ai have more realistic capabilities but to also make terrain have a bigger impact on game play and tactics, even when involving the ai.

Yes it would be nice for the ai to use the topography of the map more to their advantage... but I think this would probably be very hard to do. And more micro terrain would be gold. And ai place themselves behind both vertical and horizontal cover, as you call them, its just there is more vertical cover available And for some reason ai doesn't like sharing those low stone walls, resulting in one or 2 taking cover and the rest staying out in the open. And i'll repeat this even though I've said it many times before: Ai needs to actually use cover. duck in and pop out based on incoming fire. simply placing yourself behind it to present a smaller target is comparable to going prone in the open... in fact it can be argued that going prone is actually better. the advantage of hard cover is the fact that you can duck fully behind it and prevent yourself from being shot. the ai don't get this advantage though because they never fully hide behind it when they should.

This is essential for the ai to be any good on a squad level as well as behave realistically. In the editor you should be able to set a groups aggressiveness on a scale of 1 to 10 lets say. This would define how safe they have to feel before advancin. at level 1 they will wait until they are taking very little fire until advancing. at level 10 they will advance at all costs.

^this

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@Mbot, First few paragraphs - you mean microterrain and a mixture of 'fighting' objects that can be used for cover?

Agreed with Coulum.

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the problem are the trees and bushes constantly morphing. not giving a steady picture. in a steady picture of the horizon i quickly see a moving object.

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the problem are the trees and bushes constantly morphing. not giving a steady picture. in a steady picture of the horizon i quickly see a moving object.

I'm not sure I understand you entirely - Yes the morphing trees are very distracting when spotting. how does that relate to the ai.

@Mbot, First few paragraphs - you mean microterrain and a mixture of 'fighting' objects that can be used for cover?

Yes, if

a) micros terrain was more present

and

b) the ai knew how to use it,

there would a massive in improvements gameplay. And there shouldn't be just more micros terrain. more brush/foliage and solid cover where appropriate will help the ai too. I am discovering that more and more with McNool's Aliabad region. awesome map. I hope Limnos has a similar amount of detail.

And by the way, does the ai actually think of bushes as cover? I find they seem to take absolutely no notice of them. I know they are not ideal cover, but it would be great if ai could hide behind them if under heavy fire or even hide in/infront of them to mask their silloette when not under heavy fire.

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