Best Method To Freely Roam Vehicles

[infiltrator_2k 29]

I can get the AI vehicles to free roam using a single seek and destroy waypoint, but this will obviously this will impact on performance if you have multiple vehicles roaming around your mission. My question is what's the best method of having the AI vehicles roaming when an enemy is within a certain distance? Is there a module or script to accomplish this? If I group the vehicle to a group it usually run them over killing the units :/

BTW, for those of you who are also learning to script/edit, a vehicle will stick to using the road when setting waypoint behaviour to 'safe'. It significantly reduces the amount of waypoints needed and the vehicles travel incredible smoothly.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Infiltrator_2K

[ghostjaeger07 10]

Wouldn't a seek & destroy waypoint synced to a trigger that fires when BLUFOR is present work?

[infiltrator_2k 29]

Wouldn't a seek & destroy waypoint synced to a trigger that fires when BLUFOR is present work?

I've already tried that. I hoping there's a way of awakening an AI's vehicle to seek and destroy upon receiving enemy fire or a spotter's information to the position of a local position of enemy. It doesn't seem practical or resource friendly to have you're mission littered with triggers continuously polling for conditions. An event handler would be preferred.

[KevsNoTrev 44]

does dismissed waypoint work on vehicles or just on infantry? they usually free roam when dismissed.

[infiltrator_2k 29]

does dismissed waypoint work on vehicles or just on infantry? they usually free roam when dismissed.

The dismissed waypoint works fine with infantry. But with vehicles they get to the waypoint and just sit there waiting to be destroyed.

[KevsNoTrev 44]

and loiter only works with air vehicles then. have you tried to use bis_fnc_patrol

[b00tsy 28]

The impact of a few (or a dozen for that matter) seek&destroy waypoints is not that high. Of course like you say not the most resource friendly way, but not that big an impact on performance imo. I would just use a hold/move waypoint for the AI and then a trigger with the condition of when they should use the seek&destroy waypoint (if the mission is not huge). In the end a patrol script does basically the same (in my understanding) and lets AI seek&destroy in slow_safe mode within a radius.

[infiltrator_2k 29]

The impact of a few (or a dozen for that matter) seek&destroy waypoints is not that high. Of course like you say not the most resource friendly way, but not that big an impact on performance imo. I would just use a hold/move waypoint for the AI and then a trigger with the condition of when they should use the seek&destroy waypoint (if the mission is not huge). In the end a patrol script does basically the same (in my understanding) and lets AI seek&destroy in slow_safe mode within a radius.

Fascinated with military tactics I've paid attention to real life combat scenarios in Syria where the SAA in armoured vehicles record their battles when taking on the FSA who roam the cities on foot with RPGs, high velocity rifles with armour piercing rounds and anti-tank missiles. If there's one thing the SAA don't do it's sit still when under fire or if an enemy is near. Although in armoured vehicles they know if they stay in one location they FSA will get a fix on their location and destroy them. The same should apply with AI tanks in Arma. Popping smoke and moving tactically when under fire would be a good script to write. Sadly I lack the knowledge to do it :(

I've used Spunfin's Militarize script, although when adding vehicles they're incredibly dumb and run over too many soldier units. The vehicle's speed also fluctuates wildly when in real life whenever armoured vehicles are any where near foot soldiers their speed would be constantly limited for obvious reasons. I've been fortunate to have driven a variety of armoured vehicles when I served in the British Army and no-one would dare move around faster than limited when there were pedestrians/soldiers around whilst also being in coms with the commander or have eyes on a banksman. In short you'll never see armoured vehicles driving faster than limited when there are troops on the ground nearby unless of course the vehicles on point in combat and the same should ideally apply in Arma for added realism.

More to the point, how would an armoured vehicle react when under fire? For starters it in all probability wouldn't stay in the same location and be a sitting duck unless it had a definite target lock on the incoming attacker(s) to immediately return suppressive fire. Has anyone even seen an AI tank pop smoke yet?

[kremator 1064]

Back in the old days (read Arma2) we did a test on CPU power required for vehicle pathfinding. If you placed a waypoint off a road and told the AI to drive to it, it would takes ages. When you move the waypoint just onto an adjacent road, the vehicle would immediately start. So to cut down on CPU power, just use nearestRoads.