AI Discussion (dev branch)

[seba1976 98]

Quick Q to BIS: Will AI be able to make use of bipods / weapon resting?

I certainly hope not. The CPU load is bad enough. Having to calculate resting positions for 100 AI would be overkill.

[twisted 128]

Quick Q to BIS: Will AI be able to make use of bipods / weapon resting?

be nice if they were a little less accurate while standing if nothing else. right now they are so accuarte there's no reason for them to use bipods.

[instagoat 133]

Aren't you just getting better? ;) No, now seriously, this sounds interesting. There hasn't been any "dumbing down" lately.

AI doesn't follow you into buildings (and you can exploit it), which is a fact but it's not new. AI firing rockets at you, supposing you were on foot - that would be new and shouldn't be like that.

Otherwise

- the AI should avoid taking cover which has been fired at or is under the FOV of the enemy - foundation of this has even been improved quite recently

- AI should react to fire if the bullet impacts somewhere close (currently the AI doesn't react to passing bullets) or if it sees or hears the weapon fire

- Once alerted the AI should either go prone or take cover (or consequently both) and try to find the source of the threat

- Unlike some dive-into-the-haystack games the AI should happily plunge at you in numbers ;)

Could you please elaborate more on the issues you've been experiencing? Have you tried some showcases recently? Could you guess when it could have changed?

Do others have similar feeling about the vanilla AI as well?

Thanks a lot!

Hi, I'm gonna have a peek at the showcases and see what I can find. I can't roll back to the mission, since the save's been replaced by the game by now. However, what I can say is that the general behaviour of the AI appears consistent across skill ranges, the major thing that makes them dangerous now is accuracy. The consistency from mission to mission in this regard is also oddly fluctuating. For example:

The CSAT in Bingo Fuel were extremely easy to kill because they were just as bad at shooting me as the AAF soldiers were. In total, I got hit three times during the entire mission, all three times from very short ranges and all three times by a grazing shot that allowed me to heal. However, I was shot at with possibly hundreds of rounds. The CSAT soldiers near the fuel truck just went prone when the shooting started, and did not attempt to move away when I fired at them. One CSAT soldier from another team -did- flank me and start firing at me, but he missed with every shot (from about 80 - 100 meters) from about three quarters of a magazine before I noticed where he was shooting me from.

Then, in the Mission where Nikos is rescued, the bad accuracy was the bane of the enemy again. My settings, again, are 25 for the accuracy in difficulty settings. However, generally the AI was much more competetive in this mission for lack of buildings. The AI also operated in larger squads, which meant that they actually reacted to fire. The AI in Bingo fuel often did not react to contact because casualties taken nearby (or friendlies starting to fire at something) belonged to a different squad or patrol.

In the Mission afterwards, where NATO invades, the CSAT are extremely accurate and react to suppressed fire from 100 meters away with immediate and deadly fire. The accuracy different is so marked that it baffles me, when the AAF (and CSAT) in the Missions prior were not this accurate at all. Maybe there is a bump somewhere that causes drastic increase in accuracy with a small change in setting?

Another thing that persistently happens is AI vehicles running over people. Tanks are especially prone to this. In real life, Infantry is supposed to avoid tanks to not get run over, or tanks are told to specifically not move when infantry is around. Maybe some sort of rule like this could help?

[heinzmcdurgen 10]

When can we anticipate Arma 3 v1.40 to be released? My group is almost strictly Coop, and haven't been able to really play a solid mission since the last update broke everything AI skill related in MP. Is there anyway you could release a hot-fix that is just that fix?

[oukej 2911]

When can we anticipate Arma 3 v1.40 to be released? My group is almost strictly Coop, and haven't been able to really play a solid mission since the last update broke everything AI skill related in MP. Is there anyway you could release a hot-fix that is just that fix?

Could you please give us more details about "the last update broke everything AI skill related in MP"?

[cyruz 103]

Could you please give us more details about "the last update broke everything AI skill related in MP"?

Also curious, we're heavily co-op and we've not had any issues.

[fareast 20]

after update 1.38 certain AI refuse to drive their vehicle..the tyres move left and right but its not moving

[seba1976 98]

after update 1.38 certain AI refuse to drive their vehicle..the tyres move left and right but its not moving

It's working fine on my end. Giving a wheeled vehicle to the AI is an adventure anyway.

[doc_no1UK 10]

Was hoping team switching after dying in single player only editor missions might have been fixed by now ah well more waiting.

[mamasan8 11]

Hi, I'm gonna have a peek at the showcases and see what I can find. I can't roll back to the mission, since the save's been replaced by the game by now. However, what I can say is that the general behaviour of the AI appears consistent across skill ranges, the major thing that makes them dangerous now is accuracy. The consistency from mission to mission in this regard is also oddly fluctuating. For example:

The CSAT in Bingo Fuel were extremely easy to kill because they were just as bad at shooting me as the AAF soldiers were. In total, I got hit three times during the entire mission, all three times from very short ranges and all three times by a grazing shot that allowed me to heal. However, I was shot at with possibly hundreds of rounds. The CSAT soldiers near the fuel truck just went prone when the shooting started, and did not attempt to move away when I fired at them. One CSAT soldier from another team -did- flank me and start firing at me, but he missed with every shot (from about 80 - 100 meters) from about three quarters of a magazine before I noticed where he was shooting me from.

Then, in the Mission where Nikos is rescued, the bad accuracy was the bane of the enemy again. My settings, again, are 25 for the accuracy in difficulty settings. However, generally the AI was much more competetive in this mission for lack of buildings. The AI also operated in larger squads, which meant that they actually reacted to fire. The AI in Bingo fuel often did not react to contact because casualties taken nearby (or friendlies starting to fire at something) belonged to a different squad or patrol.

In the Mission afterwards, where NATO invades, the CSAT are extremely accurate and react to suppressed fire from 100 meters away with immediate and deadly fire. The accuracy different is so marked that it baffles me, when the AAF (and CSAT) in the Missions prior were not this accurate at all. Maybe there is a bump somewhere that causes drastic increase in accuracy with a small change in setting?

Another thing that persistently happens is AI vehicles running over people. Tanks are especially prone to this. In real life, Infantry is supposed to avoid tanks to not get run over, or tanks are told to specifically not move when infantry is around. Maybe some sort of rule like this could help?

AI sucks at driving still. Constantly getting stuck in terrain. And if AI tank is driving in town, they will just drive at max speed into buildings and whatever else is in the way. Often ending up in flipping the vehicle.

Another area that is subpar is AI airplanes. My friendly AI just fly at low speed and almost in a straight line over a town with 10-20 tanks. You would think they would speed up, turn left/right. But no, they are like sitting ducks in the sky. I have 8 or so planes flying over town. 2 passes and they are all dead, in most cases.

Then theres infantry AI getting stuck inside buildings. I ordered 4 AI to move to a house, 2 of them got stuck in there for the remainder of the mission. Building was whole.

This is all in Kavala. Server+HC+client, running DAC 3.1.

I don't use vanilla, ever.

[seba1976 98]

I don't use vanilla, ever.

Don't use it, just be aware that "vanilla" offers the least bugged experience. And you can't really report problems to BIS if you're running interference with mods.

[Bouben 3]

AI sucks at driving still. Constantly getting stuck in terrain. And if AI tank is driving in town, they will just drive at max speed into buildings and whatever else is in the way. Often ending up in flipping the vehicle.

Another area that is subpar is AI airplanes. My friendly AI just fly at low speed and almost in a straight line over a town with 10-20 tanks. You would think they would speed up, turn left/right. But no, they are like sitting ducks in the sky. I have 8 or so planes flying over town. 2 passes and they are all dead, in most cases.

Then theres infantry AI getting stuck inside buildings. I ordered 4 AI to move to a house, 2 of them got stuck in there for the remainder of the mission. Building was whole.

This is all in Kavala. Server+HC+client, running DAC 3.1.

I don't use vanilla, ever.

DAC alters vanilla AI. If you want to post relevant feedback, you have to test things in vanilla. There is no way around.

[Greenfist 1863]

On today's dev branch update:

Changed: Altis and Stratis were binarized using a new version to optimize loading times and AI pathfinding capabilities

Sounds interesting. I wonder if there's some pathfinding improvements already visible or is it just some preliminary work for coming changes.

[Bouben 3]

On today's dev branch update:

Sounds interesting. I wonder if there's some pathfinding improvements already visible or is it just some preliminary work for coming changes.

I would guess it's preliminary yet.

[MFG4Ever 13]

Could you please give us more details about "the last update broke everything AI skill related in MP"?

Well since McDurgen and I are in the same group, what we experience is, that even when setting AI skill at the very lowest, they will engage us at 700m+ ranges (without sights) and eliminate entire fire teams within 30 seconds of contact. Now our group is not a bunch of rookies just hanging out, but a community with a varied selection of members, some more experienced in the Arma series than others.

Another example is our last MP mission which was a night mission. The opposing forces did not have NVGs and the only light around their area came from a street light. We were sneaking up on them, as they were inside a building with a single patrol outside. The patrol spots us, we get into cover a firefight ensues. 15 or so guys come out of the house and manage to kill 4 guys with headshots within about 30 seconds again. Another point to be added to this was, that we tried setting the AI skill at 0.1 with the exact same result. The AI could see us through smoke, through rock cover and still blast us.

To try and counter this, we've spent a week testing out AI mods, to see if they could alter the AI skills somewhat, but to no avail. We usually only use ASR and have recently gotten rid of AISS, since it's not compatible with AISS or so it is stated on the authors thread in these forums.

For us, it seems like the 1.38 broke the AI skills. Pre 1.38 we could configure the AI level without problems, and create missions of varying difficulty, now no matter we do, the result is the same, Terminator-like AI and people getting killed within 30 seconds of initial contact.

So to sum up, this is what we've tried on an AI related note, but with no result:

- Lowering AI sliders

- Lowering ranks + sliders

- Using a custom configured ASR userconfig

- Using scripted subskill settings

- Having players outnumber AI 3 to 1

- All of the above in a testmission

- Setting all AI skills at 0.1

Naturally we run some mods on our server, but testing out the vanilla factions and AI behaviour on my own, yesterday, produced similar results.

Maybe we're just unlucky, but it seems strange that after several months with everything working fine, we then update to 1.38 and the AI become T1000 killing machines ;)

Edited February 9, 2015 by MFG4Ever

[heinzmcdurgen 10]

Could you please give us more details about "the last update broke everything AI skill related in MP"?

MFG pretty much summed it up. The reason I came here to ask is because according to the Change Log it seems tickets 022077 and 018365 correspond to what we need fixed. It's my understanding that ASR and many other AI mods take values from the sliders/subskill settings. If these are broken then it makes sense that we are having issues, as it reverts to a 0.8 or 0.9 difficulty (from what I've been reading).

Another example is a convoy mission I created last week. During testing with AI on my machine, an AT team at 200m would miss 2/5 times. For the scenario this was acceptable. Then once the mission was loaded up onto our server (which has the same difficulty settings as I was using on my machine) the AT team hit our IFV from 600m+ out with a single shot, which subsequently eliminated our only armor asset and brought the mission to a halt.

There is an obvious discrepancy between AI skill on my machine vs a MP setting, and it only appeared after the 1.38 update. Paired with the above mentioned tickets leads me to believe there was something that "broke" during the update. It appears those issues have been resolved according to the change log, so I was just curious when we'll get a non-dev branch version to use.

Thanks for all your hard work guys!

[oukej 2911]

they will engage us at 700m+ ranges (without sights)

Looks strange to me. They way the weapons are configured now the AI shouldn't shoot a rifle with ironsights at a distance larger than about 300m. The skill doesn't really have an impact on the max. firing distance of the weapon.

Speed of target acquisition could be a skill-related issue.

Do you outsource the AI to the headless client? Are the AI with such behavior local to the server?

Could you please PM me the server Arma3Profile you're using?

The reason I came here to ask is because according to the Change Log it seems tickets 022077 and 018365 correspond to what we need fixed.

These fixes would affect the experience if you used AI units remote to the server (headless client, AIs under player's command). Maybe also - as you mentioned - some mods, if they were getting the skills by commands skill/skillFinal, could have some adverse behavior. However, the fixed issues have, admittedly, been around since the beginning. That doesn't correspond with the AI behavior getting worse in 1.38 :/

Any chance, please, you could try playing on Dev Branch to see if it the recent fixes make it any better?

Thanks!

[MFG4Ever 13]

We run two servers, where one serves as a training server, mostly used for Zeus on the fly stuff, and the other is our main mission server.

However results are the same on both servers. I'll see if I can PM both profiles to you once I'm back home.

We do not use a headless client, and all AI are local to the server.

Admitted that the 700m+ statement is a stretch. It's more in the 4-500+ range. Which to some degree is ok. But the AI not being able to miss a shot, or having the ability to see through literally any cover or concealment is frustrating.

Edited February 9, 2015 by MFG4Ever

[maturin 12]

Looks strange to me. They way the weapons are configured now the AI shouldn't shoot a rifle with ironsights at a distance larger than about 300m. The skill doesn't really have an impact on the max. firing distance of the weapon.

And this is downright disastrous! They should engage at 800m with no hesitation, nor matter their sights. It should just be an area target with abysmal accuracy.

Did you guys ever notice how EVERY single A2 AI mod, without fail, increased AI engagement ranges dramatically. Hell, it was usually in the first few lines on the feature list.

[chortles 263]

At this point it sounds less like an oversight and more a difference in design...

[heinzmcdurgen 10]

And this is downright disastrous! They should engage at 800m with no hesitation, nor matter their sights. It should just be an area target with abysmal accuracy.

Did you guys ever notice how EVERY single A2 AI mod, without fail, increased AI engagement ranges dramatically. Hell, it was usually in the first few lines on the feature list.

To me that seems like bad AI design. Why should the enemy give away their position if they "know" they can't hit you? With iron sights, I know I'm not going to engage targets, even in the open, if they are more than 400-500m away. The chances of hitting + the drop off in stopping power (5.56) don't usually warrant any tactical advantage to revealing your position.

This all of course depends on the weapon system in place and the mission at hand. An MG team waiting to engage till 300m is one thing, but it makes complete sense for your standard rifleman not to engage past 400m - especially without optics.

[seba1976 98]

I know I'm not going to engage targets, even in the open, if they are more than 400-500m away.

Unless those targets start engaging first. Then you would respond to the fire. And that kind of decision is the problem when choosing AI engagement ranges. That's why every AI mod since OFP increased them with great acceptance. If the AI would never engage targets in the 600 meters range, it would be OFP all over again, and player would exploit that, killing AI units while they run for their lives.

[oukej 2911]

This all of course depends on the weapon system in place and the mission at hand. An MG team waiting to engage till 300m is one thing, but it makes complete sense for your standard rifleman not to engage past 400m - especially without optics.

MGs in the vanilla configuration have significantly larger engagement distance than rifles. In regard to the AI we have been recently re-evaluating the distance at which the firefights take place. (being aware that these properties are often subject to modding). There were some reasons behind the lower ranger (depleting ammo too fast vs. rearming, being too deadly on large dist....) but we can still improve it if we can find an objectively better state than what is currently in the game.

Any feedback and opinions about engagement ranges, success rates, differentiation with FoV (optics), etc. are of course welcome!

[heinzmcdurgen 10]

I was talking specifically about riflemen. The max effective range for a point target (ie man) for an M4 is 500m. That is the furthest range that someone *should* be able to effectivly engage a target. 600m is for for an area target, such as a group or soft vehicle target. Things like machine guns have further ranges than that, but if a rifleman is shooting at me from 600m+, I'm not wasting ammo. Suppression isn't something that this game does super well, let alone the posturing that comes from being able to return fire.

From a design standpoint (which is not the purpose of this thread, so I'm going to make this point and then drop it), if players can effectively engage targets from a distance (with or without optics) that exceeds the real life weaponry's capabilities, you need to do something that changes that. Both players and AI should have the same effective ranges as far as the weapons are concerned. Players shouldn't be able to sit back and kite AI simply because they can accurately fire further, and in this case, beyond what the RL weapon system is capable of doing. I'm unsure or not if the game incorporates MOA measurements, but if it did, I assure you, this would be a non-issue. If your sight picture is off by 1/8th of an inch, you'll miss your target at 300m by 5m. Something to think about.

[seba1976 98]

There are many many other considerations here. If, for example, you lower the engagement range down to 300 mts., missions makers should increase the number of AI groups, in order to equally challenge the players (otherwise the players would exploit the out of range corridors). Needless to say, that would further stress the CPU.