AI Waypoints and Custom Villages/Bases = Disaster?

[horrorview 10]

I've spent about a week making this really grandiose, super detailed, completely furnished (well, as furnished as the objects available allow) naval base/oil refinery that I've now begun to populate with OpFor. I literally spent hours placing laptops and smartphones on camp tables, folders on benches, all these great little details. As a noob, it was difficult, but, thanks to some great advice, I'm really "feeling" the 2D editor, now, and I was thrilled with what I'd accomplished thus far. Now that I'd finished my base, I was ready to turn it into a living and breathing environment, teeming with troops and vehicles. I had these grand schemes of trigger points triggering boats to leave the base, trucks to drive up and down the pier loading and unloading troops, and civilians arriving to/leaving work at the military offices. I mean, I've had no problem doing the same sort of thing in Agios Marina, Kamino, etc, so why would I run into any trouble here, right?

Then I placed my first two civilians down in the military offices, and set a couple of waypoints from one desk to a whiteboard and then back to the original desk. I hit preview only to see said civilians ignore the waypoints entirely, walk through the walls, off onto the pier, and drop into the water where they swam out to sea (presumably to their deaths). I Google'd the hell out of this and found that a lot of people had issues with civilian AI in custom villages, etc, so I opted to just remove their ability to do anything at all, making them lurking husks that simply stood in place, staring blankly at the walls beyond their computer screens. I figured I'd have better luck with the OpFor soldiers, and I sort of did...at least until they reached the second waypoint where, at that point, they'd either stutter step in circles or drop to the ground, crawl, stand, drop, repeat ad infinitude. Many would just walk through the surrounding sea walls or be absorbed by un-enterable buildings, never to be seen again.

I've read about the pier issues with AI, but, up until making my own, I've not had much of a problem so long as I've set the character elevation to +2. I could, at the very least, get a soldier to march back and forth, or enter a building and exit in a non-supernatural manner. Why is it that, when placing my own piers down, the AI completely ignores the paths I've assigned? I've put them down in formation, out of formation, used some old Arma 2 script that's supposed to make them only move in straight lines from one point to the next, but nothing has worked. Is there anything I can do to salvage this? I'd hate to think I spent a week making a base only to have it be a ghost town or, worse, populated by mannequins who only react once they've been shot a couple of times. :(

[Von Quest 1161]

Amusing read. We all feel your pain. Civilians can be very frustrating right now. Believe they are still being tweaked & polished.

Thread is kinda broad though? More of a rant... Did you have something a little bit more specific about AI and Waypoints?

To use Waypoints in buildings you have to use a specific 'position' waypoint # inside. There should be a dropdown list of all available points inside. To find them you have to Jump in Preview, go into the building with an AI teammate and use the MoveTo command while pointing your cursor/crosshair, and it should snap-to and readout the #. Then if/when using that building, you have to Jump back to the Editor and double-click the building on it in the middle to get the NAME of it to show up. Then you will get the dropdown list options for the INSIDE WAYPOINTS. Make sense?

Example: In my mega map I use over and over, I have Officers and a General scattered about. The General is set to randomly walk around the Airport. I have him (being important) going into and checking on things in the Air Control Tower. There are several other 'official' looking guys as well. To simulate him walking around the top (where a sniper might expect to watch, hint, hint) I had to use Waypoints #13 - #16. This makes him walk around checking the computers and looking out the windows in the top and other Commanding-looking things.

So again, double-click on the MIDDLE of the building when the NAME of it pops-up to get the Waypoint # list inside (and sometimes even the roof). So for my example, I had 7-8 waypoints just in the Tower alone, and all Waypoints were all on top of each other (since they have to be in the same middle spot) with random variables and times as to be realistic and unpredictable.

And in general; make good use of probability spawn, placement radius, and the timers' range for immersive and organic gameplay.

Hope this helps? Maybe?

Edited July 23, 2013 by Goblin