AI Discussion (dev branch)

[oukej 2910]

22 hours ago, fn_Quiksilver said:

we have seen the direction BI is focusing resources (end game, argo, dayz, ylands) and stopped bothering to report AI-related issues/requests/feedback.

Moreover our team is changing the Arma's vision towards a casual twitch & trick shooting PvP with elements of a clicker shopping game ;)
</sarcasm>

[Greenfist 1863]

16 minutes ago, oukej said:

Moreover our team is changing the Arma's vision towards a casual twitch & trick shooting PvP with elements of a clicker shopping game ;)
</sarcasm>

Wait what?!

The last I heard, you were about to branch out and take over the robotic lawn mower market with the Arma AI?

 

/s

[dragon01 902]

Found a bug with the VTOL AI, the landing behavior has gotten worse. Now, they completely ignore helipads when given a "land" waypoint, heading to the nearest runway instead.

 

They really need to get some sort of landing behavior overhaul. Right now, it's outright impossible to use an AI-controlled VTOL for transport, except between airports (which sort of defeats the point of having a VTOL transport in first place). unitCaputre works in SP, I suppose, but it's something that really should work without scripting.

[oukej 2910]

49 minutes ago, Greenfist said:

Wait what?!

The last I heard, you were about to branch out and take over the robotic lawn mower market with the Arma AI?

What's better at 360 no-scope than gadget robots? Please pass your feedback about gameplay directly to its creative director.

 

55 minutes ago, dragon01 said:

Found a bug with the VTOL AI, the landing behavior has gotten worse. Now, they completely ignore helipads when given a "land" waypoint, heading to the nearest runway instead.

 

They really need to get some sort of landing behavior overhaul. Right now, it's outright impossible to use an AI-controlled VTOL for transport, except between airports (which sort of defeats the point of having a VTOL transport in first place). unitCaputre works in SP, I suppose, but it's something that really should work without scripting.

Thanks for the heads up. I can only confirm this on Xian. Blackfish can still land on helipads. Can you pls verify?

[dragon01 902]

Will do. TBH, I actually only tested the Xian. :) Shame on me for not verifying the other VTOL. 

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

2 hours ago, oukej said:

Moreover our team is changing the Arma's vision towards a casual twitch & trick shooting PvP with elements of a clicker shopping game ;)
</sarcasm>

 

haha i knew it!!!

 

ArmA Farmville DLC coming soon???

 

poke Lord spanel and dearest pettka to assemble an AI dev task force to silence the critics :)

[dragon01 902]

6 hours ago, oukej said:

Thanks for the heads up. I can only confirm this on Xian. Blackfish can still land on helipads. Can you pls verify?

Tested the Blackfish, it circled the landing point twice, but did land on the helipad. The problem is with Xian, then.

[froggyluv 2136]

 

 Theres something wrong with the AT AI just refusing to fire when the tank/apc is stationary even in clear line of sight. You can tell them Target/Engage At Will/Everything and they wont even pull out their launcher until the APC makes a move of some kind and then they will all pull out their weapon at the EXACT same time. Im too tired to make videos of these really glaringly bad AT AI refusals -please fix this Im not sure you guys are aware or even care at this point..

 

There is just no worse feeling than taking the time to control your AI to sneak up on an APC buried in an urban area, get behind him after much maneuvering -and him just refusing to either pull his weapon or fire. If they're gonna be buggy -let them err on the side of homicidal as this timidity makes me wanna toss my monitor out the window and gorge on raw meat.

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

4 hours ago, froggyluv said:

 

 Theres something wrong with the AT AI just refusing to fire when the tank/apc is stationary even in clear line of sight. You can tell them Target/Engage At Will/Everything and they wont even pull out their launcher until the APC makes a move of some kind and then they will all pull out their weapon at the EXACT same time. Im too tired to make videos of these really glaringly bad AT AI refusals -please fix this Im not sure you guys are aware or even care at this point..

 

There is just no worse feeling than taking the time to control your AI to sneak up on an APC buried in an urban area, get behind him after much maneuvering -and him just refusing to either pull his weapon or fire. If they're gonna be buggy -let them err on the side of homicidal as this timidity makes me wanna toss my monitor out the window and gorge on raw meat.

Just tried it on devbranch, placed a kamysh around 650m, with me and an rifleman(AT) and missile specialist(AT) in my group.

They made short work of the kamysh, didn't even need to give any orders,

Can you try it again in the empty VR world?

 

Cheers

[froggyluv 2136]

 

You can see they will not even attempt to pull their weapons until the tank has engaged and im already dead. At that point obviously its futile. What should have been a winning tactical advantage utterly fails and its happening to me non-stop. I have more video if needed

 

This is Dev Branch no mods -but honestly I have video of this problem going on for years - Ive actually never had it so bad that they wouldnt fire in VR with zero elevation/clutter challenges

 

Heres re-creation of scenario last nite that prompted me to report. It took me a good 35 minutes to navigate around this factor ripe with enemy infantry and pathfinding challenges to get behind this piece of armor that had been lighting up my men. Again, you can see we have clear shot but men wont even switch weapons until its too late

 

 

 Heres a similar report from years ago i posted here -its long but nails home the point. This is a big problem and can really just ruin the game for people who play primarily with AI. Flashpoint AT had zero problems opeing up, we had option to both force their weapon to use and they actually listened when we said "Fire!". They would fire at anything we told them. Bi you said although (much to my chagrin) your focused on streamlining AI, not adding new behaviour -how exactly is this streamlined? This is a major regression. With an upcoming Tank DLC - Id hope youd pay some attention to the guys expected to counter them.

 

 

[oukej 2910]

The tank doesn't seem to have it's engine running. Possibly invalid, cold target for a Titan launcher.

[froggyluv 2136]

 

 Hmm, never considered that. Tried again with a move order for tank to insure engine was running and my guys did pull out their weapons -they just wont fire I guess we were too close for that weapon to work? With an Engage At Will order they kinda run all over the place - guessing they're trying to get to minimim firing spot but they dont know how - like my last video :D

 

 So I guess im wrong here, sorry I apologize for the rant - I need to better understand my weapons. Apparently low tech weaponry like RPG's and what not are better for up close urban type armor encounters.

[iratus 71]

2 hours ago, froggyluv said:

 

Apparently low tech weaponry like RPG's and what not are better for up close urban type armor encounters.

 

Definetly! Titan AT launchers are great at medium to long ranges, but quite unwieldy in short range engagements. And imo this is how it should be

[The Man Without Qualities 110]

Lesson learned: TITAN is crap for urban warfare :-)

 

 

So in case of AT range to close I expect at least that boring "no can't do" or so by AI :-)

Better would be a dedicated "not in weapon range" refusal.

 

But only in case if you order AI to a position and then assign target + give fire command.

 

When I give the attack command, I expect the AI to bring itself into the right weapon distance which could also mean that AI tries to get more distance to gain minimum weapon distance.

 

There is a common logical fault in AI on foot, wheel, track, wing: When you order an attack, they keep on getting closer to the target, regardless if the weapons owned are made for miles distance or not.

That is alone is a topic for another AI logic overhaul.

 

@froggyluv can you try again with target in optimal weapon distance

engine on/crewed

engine off/crewed

engine on/no crew

engine off/no crew

 

Expected results: AI fires in all 4 cases at the target as long as the AT weapon provides beside thermal homing also a manual guidance or pure manual aiming.

[bad benson 1733]

On 4.5.2017 at 0:20 PM, Greenfist said:

robotic lawn mower market with the Arma AI?

 

/s

 

oh god! limbs will be lost. the horror

[The Man Without Qualities 110]

13 hours ago, bad benson said:

 

oh god! limbs will be lost. the horror

Have a picture in my head....BI lawn mover is shredding my kids rabbits...then bumping endless against and obstacle until the wheels disappear to finally explode.

[nekokamiguru 1]

8 hours ago, The Man Without Qualities said:

Have a picture in my head....BI lawn mover is shredding my kids rabbits...then bumping endless against and obstacle until the wheels disappear to finally explode.

It also has to take out a street sign and your next door neighbors fence. 

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

On 5/4/2017 at 8:04 PM, oukej said:

Moreover our team is changing the Arma's vision towards a casual twitch & trick shooting PvP with elements of a clicker shopping game ;)
</sarcasm>

 

it might seem like sarcasm but we have also had to tolerate for 4 years of:

 

- AI driving around bridges

- having no idea how to move through a building

- walking in the middle of the busy road

- car cant go 5 min without breaking wheel

- ancient fixed-wing combat logic

- transport helicopters unable to land without 150 line script support

- land vehicles ramming repeatedly into trees with clear road right beside

- very little actually being done to innovate the core AI systems

- no new advanced behaviors

 

we have had some bits exposed to scripting (disableAI, suppressivefire, suppression, aiming error, etc) which is fantastic, but this is hardly improvement to the core AI stuff.

 

This is not fault of you or any of the devs on the ground, its fault of your boss(es) allocating resources elsewhere. 

 

Should BI move toward more profitable Industry Standards, or hold on to its roots of milsim/coop?

 

And its not like there is blindness here, with AI improvements. Look at the handful of AI mods that many users like, let them be the guide for engine improvements. ASR, bCombat, VCOM, GAIA, ALIVE

 

The small tweaks like "forgetTarget"  "disableAI autocombat"   are absolutely fantastic, but they are not forward development of core AI.

 

If BI wants to see more modes like "Altis Life" and "King of the Hill" and zombie modes, then company should keep allocating resources as current. If BI wants to see more modes like CTI, cooperative, and more small, playable workshop missions made by novice designers, then BI needs to commit more resources to AI.

 

Criticising doesn't mean we dislike, it means we've spotted weaknesses and would like to see them improved.

 

If BI would provide some clarity in its direction, maybe we would be more silent.   "hey users, we are leaving behind our Legacy community of AI-supported content and moving toward Industry Standard profitable PvP/TvT Sandbox" then I would stop bothering to bring up these weaknesses

[silentghoust 132]

BI direction has always been to provide a platform for users to build on. AI mods fix stuff but at the cost of more system resources. I can only imagine how the devs feel. "I want everything perfect, and also to run the game with x3 the amount of assets we intended for it to run with". I mean, I get it, I get frustrated with the AI sometimes as well. But remember, what is YOUR problems isn't always the problems of another communities. BI has to find a middle ground for everybody.

[andersson 285]

Drop one car with one single AI and give it a few WPs and you can see the problem. It's not like we are overloading the system.

[KeyCat 131]

On den 13 maj 2017 at 7:10 AM, fn_Quiksilver said:

The small tweaks like "forgetTarget"  "disableAI autocombat"   are absolutely fantastic, but they are not forward development of core AI

 

[ayjay 117]

I'm a ' now and again ' player of this game mainly because I've never played multiplayer or ever will so it's single player for me every time. The reason I don't play regularly is solely because the AI just doesn't do it for me and so every couple of months I fire up Arma 3, check in here and see if things have gotten any better. I can see a lot of work has been done and because I'm not here regularly I might have missed something important in AI development ( important for what I would like to see.)

So I've been back for a couple of weeks now after reading about the upcoming Airborne mod for Iron Front and for all that time I've been trying to do something pretty basic and which reading through this thread I see people were talking about in July 2013, ie. get an AI squad of players to go to a particular place and following my order stay there and defend it. The chat in 2013 was about the 'Hold' waypoint and it's pointlessness and as far as I can see, coming up to four years later this is still the case. If I could only order a squad somewhere and know they will go there and stay there, reacting properly to combat by crouching or going prone, returning fire and then either stop firing if the enemy is eliminated or flee if they take too many casualties, this would make the game for me. I've been trying to help myself, checking out stuff in the Scripting Section, playing around with Skill settings and basic stuff like that but no go. For me anyway even the AI mods don't seem to do what I want. As it is my interest is waning by the day and in a day or so I will stop playing again for a few months.

If I've missed something in my times away and everything I've said is now achievable without the ability to write scripts or whatever please tell me. I would love to be wrong about all this.

[joostsidy 685]

11 minutes ago, ayjay said:

snip

 

I have to admit I don't really follow this. I'm an exclusively single player guy and I like the AI. Of course, it's far from perfect but they can without scripting:

- will go to combat mode, so they will go crouching, taking cover, return fire etc.

- they or the enemy will flee if they start getting wiped out

- they will send units to flank the enemy (I think this is one of the coolest features, a very real threat from ai to a human player who's trying to RAMBO)

 

I think they will do this all if you just give a squad a movement waypoint to the center of a town you want to defend. If you up the skill for these guys they will fight very effectively.

 

I said 'I think', because I do use some simple scripts to make the game more interesting. Some examples:

- make a squad go somewhere and at the destination spread out in a customizable pattern.

- make units follow a dynamic route based on certain events/triggers in the mission

- a flee/surrender script to prevent 'hunt for the last person in the area'

- insertion/extraction like VTOL flies to LZ unloads LSV, LSV moves to town to defend and vice versa

 

At the moment I think Arma is awesome for 'medium combined arms' missions, with a couple of vehicles and squads for all sides, making sure they have enough room to operate, but at the same time are not too dependent on a certain unit, because AI screw-ups can always happen.

 

The AI is probably not going to make a big leap forward in Arma 3 so if you don't like this style of play with ai, and don't like scripting then I agree with you, and perhaps Arma is not the game for you.

 

 

 

 

[ayjay 117]

Hello joostsidy. Thanks for your reply. I suppose I might be asking the AI to act/react too realistically.  Your point about combat mode. I see them crouching, standing, running around in circles, going prone, standing, going prone,crouching and so on. Why on earth can't they just lie prone which surely is what they would really do? Again sending units to flank the enemy, I can send a squad somewhere on a ' Hold ' waypoint, 10 men. They start taking fire from a concealed enemy and without knowing the enemies strength the squad leader will order 2 troops out of the waypoint area, sending them hundreds of yards forward and largely unsupported to out flank what could be a full company of the enemy finishing up he'll send another 2 or 3 several hundred yards out on the other flank. It's unrealistic and I wouldn't have thought it would take a big leap forward to at least have the option for an AI unit to follow an order and stay put. As for it not being the game for me I think you are probably right and having bought Arma II, Arma II Operation Arrowhead, Arma II Reinforcements, Arma III and Apex I guess I should have learned my lesson but still I don't regret buying any of them. It will happen one day. I'm convinced. I think. 

[sammael 366]

 

 

It is Time to remember the old important bug wih AI