[WIP] bCombat infantry AI Mod [SP]

[fabrizio_t 58]

Is this mod compatible with the TPW Mods ?/

Should i deactivate the supression features of one of these two to make them work together ?

bCombat already includes suppression effects on morale as well as suppressive fire, better stance handling, enhanced fire & movement, overwatch routines, CQB tweaks including short/long distance blind grenade throwing.

Autoriflemen / machinegunners actively lay suppressive fire letting groups move on.

All units hear nearby gunfire and usually investigate the places it comes from.

Their morale is affected by combat stress, wounds, friendly casualties, suppression fire, nearby ricochet / explosions and all this affects their combat effectiveness.

Units return fire if suppressed and cover each other.

They may move to cover, be pinned, panic, flee and surrender.

Then there's more.

A non-complete list of features in contained within the first post:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?167288-bCombat-test-candidates

So it's an alternative to other mods such as TPW suppression, whose aim is to enhance combat experience by making AI more human alike, which means better or worse depending on situation.

Hard to explain with a few words, i'd suggest to give bCombat a try alone to make an idea of its ecosystem (which includes core features as well as optional features, take a look into config,sqf).

I'd suggest to get Assault on Charkia mission on Steam Workshop and give it a run with bCombat, it's a good showcase for its features.

You may notice as well how gameplay differs from vanilla.

---------- Post added at 18:07 ---------- Previous post was at 17:44 ----------

a nifty pick from my latest v0.15 debug session:

two autoriflemen are being in overwatch stance and laying suppressive fire to cover group movement.

After being targeted by enemy fire the soldier on the right is throwing a smoke grenade for concealement, from prone stance.

Edited December 24, 2013 by fabrizio_T

[artisanal 22]

I tested your mod, and I can't even explain how susprisingly good it was. Truly, the improvements are huge compared to the vanilla IA. With your mod the AI really behaves more human-like. Especially in CQB, the results seam to be absolutely beautiful.

Merry christmas y'all, and keep up the good work.

[busso 10]

I've been looking forward to testing this so many thanks for making it available. Merry Christmas.:)

[sttosin 67]

Wow Fab. What a nice christmas gift! First impression - AI seems to be much more calculated...its weird....in a good way. Keep up the great work.

[jake_krieger 10]

Fabrizio_T ... sir , i have to tip my hat off for you.

I alt-Tabbed right now out of my playing because i can´t wait to tell you and the ARMA 3 Community that this mod of yours , bCombat

is next to J.S.R.S and BlastcoreFX the most important and best made mod there is.

The combat in the mission [TDNL] Red Hammer - Invasion, which is avalaible in the workshop ,

between my AI comrades and the enemy team feels almost like im back to my old days of playing with real Human comrades in a mil-sim group(Especially the open terrain, medium to long range engagements).

With biggest thanks and respect,

Jake_Krieger

Edit: I don´t know if its because of the mod itself , a bug in the mission and/or the combination of all my resource intensive mods running parallel(JSRS,Blastcore,bCombat,TPW Mods) ,

that my FPS is extremely low in the middle of the mission. And the most weirdest thing is , i cant click on Configure in the Pause menu.

EDIT 2: Holy F*** , even tough it lagged like hell, this was the most intense CQB fight i´ve ever witnessed in Single player ARMA.(The last third of the mentioned mission)

Edited December 24, 2013 by Jake_Krieger

[rome 0]

Fabrizio_T ... sir , i have to tip my hat off for you.

I alt-Tabbed right now out of my playing because i can´t wait to tell you and the ARMA 3 Community that this mod of yours , bCombat

is next to J.S.R.S and BlastcoreFX the most important and best made mod there is.

The combat in the mission [TDNL] Red Hammer - Invasion, which is avalaible in the workshop ,

between my AI comrades and the enemy team feels almost like im back to my old days of playing with real Human comrades in a mil-sim group(Especially the open terrain, medium to long range engagements).

With biggest thanks and respect,

Jake_Krieger

Edit: I don´t know if its because of the mod itself , a bug in the mission and/or the combination of all my resource intensive mods running parallel(JSRS,Blastcore,bCombat,TPW Mods) ,

that my FPS is extremely low in the middle of the mission. And the most weirdest thing is , i cant click on Configure in the Pause menu.

EDIT 2: Holy F*** , even tough it lagged like hell, this was the most intense CQB fight i´ve ever witnessed in Single player ARMA.(The last third of the mentioned mission)

Guys, try to make some videos for us please! Would be great !

[kremator 1064]

You can download it yourself now RoME ! Check a few posts up !

I've just been having a whale of a time on Proving Grounds (thanks Alduric!) with the AI on 0.14 Very good indeed. 2 vs 2 rifle squads. One BLUFOR team spotted OPFOR and began putting down covering fire. The other team pushed forward under cover, unfortunately they came under fire from the first OPFOR team and were pinned. The second OPFOR team then were able to flank them leading to all but one BLUFOR death (where he surrendered). With greater numbers OPFOR advanced on the remaining BLUFOR rifle squad, and once again pinned them and flanked them .... BLUFOR all dead except 2 that surrendered.

Great stuff.

@Jake - it is probably TPW mods causing a lot of that lag. I found that CIVs were a major cause of lag.

[rome 0]

You can download it yourself now RoME ! Check a few posts up !

I've just been having a whale of a time on Proving Grounds (thanks Alduric!) with the AI on 0.14 Very good indeed. 2 vs 2 rifle squads. One BLUFOR team spotted OPFOR and began putting down covering fire. The other team pushed forward under cover, unfortunately they came under fire from the first OPFOR team and were pinned. The second OPFOR team then were able to flank them leading to all but one BLUFOR death (where he surrendered). With greater numbers OPFOR advanced on the remaining BLUFOR rifle squad, and once again pinned them and flanked them .... BLUFOR all dead except 2 that surrendered.

Great stuff.

@Jake - it is probably TPW mods causing a lot of that lag. I found that CIVs were a major cause of lag.

I can't play it! I only have a Macbook at the moement! AAAaaaaaaaah!

[ruin 10]

Holy shizz dude this is awesome, i just tested this with 2 nato vs 2 csat groups and i must say its really impressive. When the firing started an whole enemy group sacrificed themselfs for the other group to flank us :) ^^ Keep up the good work

[serjames 357]

fabrizio I'm testing the release now on our dedicated server. Alive Insurgency basically.

We have traditionally used ASR_AI as that allows us to specify skill levels of individual unit types, i.e. special forces are pretty uber, Snipers have amazing aim, grunts are... well not so good etc etc.

I don't see that being configurable anywehre in your bcombat, can we continue to run them both ?

Should I load one before the other etc ?

Keen to know if anyone else has tested this.

Thanks

SJ

[bravo409 13]

fabrizio I'm testing the release now on our dedicated server. Alive Insurgency basically.

We have traditionally used ASR_AI as that allows us to specify skill levels of individual unit types, i.e. special forces are pretty uber, Snipers have amazing aim, grunts are... well not so good etc etc.

I don't see that being configurable anywehre in your bcombat, can we continue to run them both ?

Should I load one before the other etc ?

Keen to know if anyone else has tested this.

Thanks

SJ

This doesnt work good with Asr Ai just use bcombat ...Trust me I'm one of the testers and have already tried it....

---------- Post added at 11:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:37 PM ----------

Fab...I have yet to see surrendering and blind fire what am I doing wrong to not achieve this? However I have good results in my testing other then this. I still see a slight problem with leaders sitting in the road and then try and take cover after everyone else has. I have seen to many times the leader being the first shot because he didnt take cover.... Also I would like to know should the recovery penalty be higher than 2 seems like they recover to fast specially with being shot at with a lot of fire? Also wondering what everyone is using for there main combat configs example heres mine ............................................ Thanks Merry Christmas to All you Arma fans have a safe holiday.......................

// Suppression-related params

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_bullet") then { bcombat_penalty_bullet = 5; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_flanking") then { bcombat_penalty_flanking = 5; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss - adding to bcombat_penalty_bullet!

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_scream") then { bcombat_penalty_scream = 0; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_enemy_unknown") then { bcombat_penalty_enemy_unknown = 7; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss - adding to bcombat_penalty_bullet!

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_enemy_contact") then { bcombat_penalty_enemy_contact = 25; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_enemy_close") then { bcombat_penalty_enemy_close = 5; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_casualty") then { bcombat_penalty_casualty = 30; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_wounded") then { bcombat_penalty_wounded = 12; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_explosion") then { bcombat_penalty_explosion = 6; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss

if(isNil "bcombat_penalty_recovery") then { bcombat_penalty_recovery = 2; }; // max relative % of unit skill loss

Edited December 25, 2013 by bravo409

[kremator 1064]

fabrizio I'm testing the release now on our dedicated server. Alive Insurgency basically.

We have traditionally used ASR_AI as that allows us to specify skill levels of individual unit types, i.e. special forces are pretty uber, Snipers have amazing aim, grunts are... well not so good etc etc.

I don't see that being configurable anywehre in your bcombat, can we continue to run them both ?

Should I load one before the other etc ?

Keen to know if anyone else has tested this.

Thanks

SJ

Serjames, you configure AI skill directly from AISkill module in ALiVE!

[fabrizio_t 58]

Fab...I have yet to see surrendering and blind fire what am I doing wrong to not achieve this?

As long as you have:

bcombat_allow_suppressive_fire = true

in config.sqf blind / suppression fire is active (it's default).

Surrendering is a rare event, triggered when fleeing units see an enemy in clear line of sight at short distance.

It's more frequent for lowly skilled units.

EDIT: from what you say looks like your config.sqf is not loaded correctly, or you have some misconfiguration / third party mod conflict.

I'd suggest you to remove your "\@bcombat" folder altogether and replace it with a fresh v0.14 folder.

---------- Post added at 18:56 ---------- Previous post was at 18:49 ----------

fabrizio I'm testing the release now on our dedicated server. Alive Insurgency basically.

We have traditionally used ASR_AI as that allows us to specify skill levels of individual unit types, i.e. special forces are pretty uber, Snipers have amazing aim, grunts are... well not so good etc etc.

I don't see that being configurable anywehre in your bcombat, can we continue to run them both ?

Should I load one before the other etc ?

Keen to know if anyone else has tested this.

Thanks

SJ

If ASR_AI is only setting skill levels i see no problems, as long as it's loaded before bCombat.

bCombat picks unit skill and based on this dynamically computes effectiveness and penalties.

Basically bCombat enhancements are skill driven, rather than class driven.

At the moment bCombat is targeted and tested for Single Player and MP is currently not supported as it's completely untested.

That said, as long as AI rests local to the server i suppose it may already work to some extents, except for some minor animation / stance issues.

----

By the way, anybody willing to post some videos is welcome, i'm terrible at this ;)

Edited December 25, 2013 by fabrizio_T

[bravo409 13]

Fab____ this probably a dumb question but do you have to change both the config and bcombat....cause there are things in bcombat that aren't in config...Also how do I turn defaults on guess I'm not understanding that but I'm seeing good things from the mod so I must be doing something right.

[fabrizio_t 58]

Edit: I don´t know if its because of the mod itself , a bug in the mission and/or the combination of all my resource intensive mods running parallel(JSRS,Blastcore,bCombat,TPW Mods) ,

that my FPS is extremely low in the middle of the mission.

I usually play with bCombat + JSRS and up to 100 AI units, no FPS issues.

Not sure about TPW mods and Blastcore effect.

EDIT: please try excluding TPW EBS / suppression if active.

---------- Post added at 19:49 ---------- Previous post was at 19:38 ----------

Fab____ this probably a dumb question but do you have to change both the config and bcombat....cause there are things in bcombat that aren't in config...Also how do I turn defaults on guess I'm not understanding that but I'm seeing good things from the mod so I must be doing something right.

Not everything is into config.sqf yet.

As of v0.14 you get about 40 settings exposed and documented, which will become 50+ in v0.15 and more later.

Basically i'm wishing to render almost everything parametrical + editable and to restrict hardcoded settings to the bare minimum.

Any custom configuration should be done exclusively from within config.sqf.

The values from config.sqf override those into bcombat.sqf, which is the file holding defaults and therefore should not be edited.

For instance you may choose to empty config.sqf or comment everything into it and then mod would run into barebone / compatibility mode, with only core features active (this would grant it's not breaking any missions).

Let me know which settings you are willing to change, that are not already contained into config.sqf, but present into bcombat.sqf.

Edited December 25, 2013 by fabrizio_T

[sttosin 67]

By the way, anybody willing to post some videos is welcome, i'm terrible at this ;)

Here's one:

---------- Post added at 21:33 ---------- Previous post was at 21:29 ----------

An issue I observed (not in this video): autorifle man shooting into a bridge right in front of his face on full auto...never correcting. Using all default v0.14 settings btw.

---------- Post added at 21:40 ---------- Previous post was at 21:33 ----------

Another observation. I saw a unit surrender....then bullets start flying around nearly getting killed but he just stood there with hands on his head. Ideally the unit will get down in crouch/prone if life is in danger even maintaining his surrender gesture.

---------- Post added at 21:53 ---------- Previous post was at 21:40 ----------

One more. Any plans to have Snipers go into overwatch mode?

[fabrizio_t 58]

Here's one:

Thank you.

Care to share which kind of wayponts are given those groups?

I see the group with the kneeling machinegunner acting a bit too "static", looks like it has no waypoints or a single HOLD waypoint.

Or maybe it's Zargabad.

I'd like to know what's the skill for that machinegunner too, as well as average skill for other units.

An issue I observed (not in this video): autorifle man shooting into a bridge right in front of his face on full auto...never correcting. Using all default v0.14 settings btw.

It's something that happens when units are laying suppressive fire.

That's done via the suppressFor scripting command, which has some issues in calculating material thickness.

Hence sometimes units fire through thick objects, considering them pierceable.

It's a known issue, as reported into config.sqf, related to suppressive fire.

I hope BIS will deal with this.

Another observation. I saw a unit surrender....then bullets start flying around nearly getting killed but he just stood there with hands on his head. Ideally the unit will get down in crouch/prone if life is in danger even maintaining his surrender gesture.

I think we have no "surrender" animation other than in standing posture.

I'll doublecheck this.

One more. Any plans to have Snipers go into overwatch mode?

Sure, it's in the works.

Edited December 25, 2013 by fabrizio_T

[sttosin 67]

The weapons/units are from massi's mod US MARINE CORPS MARSOC group. The team I placed included Machine gunners, AT, Rifleman, JTAC, Medic.

---------- Post added at 22:17 ---------- Previous post was at 22:14 ----------

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?165080-US-Marine-Corp-and-MARSOC-units-A3

[fabrizio_t 58]

The weapons/units are from massi's mod US MARINE CORPS MARSOC group. The team I placed included Machine gunners, AT, Rifleman, JTAC, Medic.

---------- Post added at 22:17 ---------- Previous post was at 22:14 ----------

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?165080-US-Marine-Corp-and-MARSOC-units-A3

Sorry, i wrote weapons, but i meant waypoints :p...

Edited December 25, 2013 by fabrizio_T

[sttosin 67]

Ah. All SAD

[jake_krieger 10]

Hey Fabrizio here are my most important findings/feedback concerning the mod,

With bcombat often my AI comrades stay 60Meters behind me and stay in combat mode ,

searching cover instead of like i tell them to do just be aware and go into formation

they are stubborn and dont want to get to formation.

Could you please make it that they should seek cover in dangerous places

but won´t stay more than 10 meters away from the formation

at any given moment except when i(the teamleader) am not moving so much

and engage multiple enemies with the group.

Another important thing.

They are very good at flanking in CQC

BUT when they come around the corner they dont have the weapon ready.

They should be in combat pace walking-mode and have the gun barrel already pointed into my direction

when they go around the corner.

Edit: Additionally i found out that many AI enemies run past me without even pointing their gun at me.

They also sometimes just crawl on the ground and just crawl into the opposite direction without firing at me.

A bug that i often also see is that even tough their barrel is not pointed at me yet shoot their rifle into the most illogical directions.

Edited December 25, 2013 by Jake_Krieger

[Psilocybe 3]

Played the campaign with this, speed of sound and blastcore. Wow is all I can say. I died 3 times in the very first engagement after discovering the rolled car. Very good, this is shaping up amazingly.

[sttosin 67]

Thank you.

Care to share which kind of wayponts are given those groups?

I see the group with the kneeling machinegunner acting a bit too "static", looks like it has no waypoints or a single HOLD waypoint.

Or maybe it's Zargabad.

I'd like to know what's the skill for that machinegunner too, as well as average skill for other units.

I said search and destroy earlier. Sorry. That group actually had a guard waypoint. All the other units on the map had a search and destroy. The group with the MG was still about 25-30m from the waypoint position. The default skill on the MG in the group on the slider scale is like .3 of the full range. None of the AI had skill over .45. Avg AI skill on the slider is about .3. Did not modify config.sqf.

[mythlawlbear 10]

I've got a funky bug, when I activate bcombat I cant aim properly. When I move my mouse around the gun moves but my camera does not. And looking around (alt) doesn't work.

Edit: Erasing the information inside the bcombat_config file then saving it fixes this bug.

Edited December 26, 2013 by mythlawlbear

[bravo409 13]

Hey Fabrizio here are my most important findings/feedback concerning the mod,

With bcombat often my AI comrades stay 60Meters behind me and stay in combat mode ,

searching cover instead of like i tell them to do just be aware and go into formation

they are stubborn and dont want to get to formation.

Could you please make it that they should seek cover in dangerous places

but won´t stay more than 10 meters away from the formation

at any given moment except when i(the teamleader) am not moving so much

and engage multiple enemies with the group.

Another important thing.

They are very good at flanking in CQC

BUT when they come around the corner they dont have the weapon ready.

They should be in combat pace walking-mode and have the gun barrel already pointed into my direction

when they go around the corner.

Edit: Additionally i found out that many AI enemies run past me without even pointing their gun at me.

They also sometimes just crawl on the ground and just crawl into the opposite direction without firing at me.

A bug that i often also see is that even tough their barrel is not pointed at me yet shoot their rifle into the most illogical directions.

I find if you use tpw mod and activate Los =1 there cqb is better on the corner thing so give that a try but leave the rest of the mod 0 only have Los active nothing else.