Hello, let's be friends instead!

[polar bear 10]

Have you guys ever seen enemy units fail to recognize each other as enemies before?

For fun the other day I got out the editor and decided to see if I could simulate a multi-stage attack on Zagrabad. I filled it full of AA and OPFOR units with anti-tank, then sent in a bunch of A10's, followed by a wave of Apache's, a lot of armour, and finally some infrantry units. I had hundreds of units on each side. Then I set myself up as a civilian to walk around Zagrabad and watch the violence unfold.

Well the air campaign went swimmingly with lots of planes getting shot down, but also significant bombardment of targets in the city. Seemed pretty good. Then the helicopters arrived and there was some more action, and finally the amour rolled into the city. Infantry was still some ways out marching in.

Well this is when I noticed something odd. There were a couple of BLUEFOR armor units wandering around Zagrabad, and a bunch of OPFOR defenders, but they weren't fighting each other! I saw one Stryker sitting at an intersection and all around there were some Takistani army infantry units just hanging out. One guy was lying on the ground next to the Stryker, pointing the opposite direction. Apache's were circling. Funniest--I had provisioned a little Takistani airforce, a couple of those biplanes flying around in a circle. Nobody bothered with them--they continued to fly around the whole time.

So everybody was getting along just fine, and nobody was shooting. Seems like they had all become friends. That's swell, but not what I was expecting!

Any idea what causes this?

Edited June 11, 2012 by Polar Bear

[gambla 10]

AI maximum confused :)

Edit: Ok, seriously, i'm sure that the cpu, in this case, got a massive input backlog of ai's visuals / sightings, and can't handle it simultaniously.

Edited June 11, 2012 by gambla

[Tijai 1]

I've seen this in warfare a few times.

Have a squad in armour or just infantry and enemy vehicle just seems to ignore us.

..thing is mine ignore it as well - have to go and DIY lol.

[Phantom Six 25]

I'm pretty sure your CPU is at its limit for that part. If there's too much AI without enough CPU to feed it, they'll sit and stare at each other.

[polar bear 10]

I'm pretty sure your CPU is at its limit for that part. If there's too much AI without enough CPU to feed it, they'll sit and stare at each other.

Sounds like that might be it. I had several hundreds of units, including lots of air, I did expect it to be slow. Didn't realize that taxing the CPU would also make the AI stupid.

Just out of curiosity, is there any way to get data out of ArmA to figure out how heavily taxed the CPU is, and whether it's having these kinds of problems?

[twirly 11]

ALT-TAB out of Arma 2 and look at the CPU Performance for the Operating System.... in XP press CTRL-ALT-DEL look fro the Performance tab. If the CPU(s) aren't maxing out you're good.

[zonekiller 174]

i do see this happen a lot - even with my dedicated server running at - 25 fps +, i also find they have issues moving to waypoints , and its random - make one vehicle and it can wait up to 10

minutes to move but the vehicle you created 10 seconds after the first moves strait away.

just the other day testing -=BattleZone=- V5 i was with an AI controlled vehicle. server running at 27 Fps.

i was being followed by another AI vehicle with a player in cargo as well.

we entered an enemy controlled town as soon as the first shot was fired the AI driver took evasive action

but in the first vehicle "mine" the gunner did nothing , not even point the MG gun anywhere near the direction

of the enemy. my vehicle was destroyed but the second vehicle came in from behind with guns blazing , both HUMVIES

now one thing i have noticed - when a vehicle goes into combat mode - because of a close enemy- it can throw up a new waypoint every second.

-- go to that house , move 100 meters south , move 100 meters north ect --

path planing uses a lot of CPU power - tested this in -=BZ=- as i made the scripted waypoints move to nearest road where possible and do get much better performance in V5.

so my guess is thats where the issue lays , the combat fsm gets chocked up path planning instead of shooting

this is just a guess

[gambla 10]

Just out of curiosity, is there any way to get data out of ArmA to figure out how heavily taxed the CPU is, and whether it's having these kinds of problems?

Not out of ArmA but you can use "Core Temp" for logging CPU utilization. Check my measurement posted in http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?72181-Will-my-PC-Run-this-What-CPU-GPU-to-get-What-settings-System-Specifications/page829