[OPEN BETA] [SP] bCombat infantry AI Mod

[pulstar 55]

It's still a game. And I hope it stays a game lol! Anything as simple as opponents not running away from a live grenade can be enough to break the immersion. Ultimately if you're vying for realism nothing beats going against human-controlled troops.

[ophirb 13]

Congrats on the new stable release!

In my experience so far I noticed that the AI will pop smoke in every single firefight. Is the combat performance of AI units that bcombat strives to achive dependent on the use of smoke grenades every time?

Edited April 29, 2014 by Ophirb

[Bouben 3]

I love the mod, it really opens up the battlefield and makes it much more dynamic, but the game still has that meat-grinder feel to it since the OFP days. I can't play a mission without losing most of my squad, especially if the AI is leading. It's possible to minimize casualties with micro-management as a squad leader, but it feels t forced.

For Arma3 my baseline is the Combined Arms showcase. Right now even wit the AI set to novice by the end of securing the base there was a total of 4 AI left. That just doesn't feel right. I'll accept some casualties, but there has to be a way to make the friendly AI better at surviving the battle.

Very well said.

[friznit2 350]

Right now even wit the AI set to novice by the end of securing the base there was a total of 4 AI left. That just doesn't feel right. I'll accept some casualties, but there has to be a way to make the friendly AI better at surviving the battle.

The enemy AI commander is currently raging at your superhuman powers to attack and clear his entire base whilst only sustaining a couple of casualties.

[Predator.v2 10]

Tw questions about this mod.

- Are there any plans to make this mp compatible? As well for clients as for dedicated servers?

- I see, that AI soldiers break formation when in "auto danger" and advance on their own. Is there any way to get them back after a small fight, when there is no enemy in sight and you wanna advance?

[fabrizio_t 58]

Tw questions about this mod.

- Are there any plans to make this mp compatible? As well for clients as for dedicated servers?

- I see, that AI soldiers break formation when in "auto danger" and advance on their own. Is there any way to get them back after a small fight, when there is no enemy in sight and you wanna advance?

MP is not officially supported yet, but many people are running bCombat on server without major showstoppers.

Then just a clarification: bCombat is designed not to break any ROE defined by AI combatMode and behaviour.

It does not explicitly order units to move around, except for movement to cover and 2 notable cases:

• It allow units to lock on targets and chase them as long as bcombat_allow_targeting = true.
  That happens only when distance is under some threshold. See bcombat_targeting_max_distance, by default max. distance is 150m.when combatMode is set to RED (=engage at will), it's tighter otherwise.
  
• It allows units to search suspect positions (See: bcombat_allow_investigate ): by default max. distance to searched position is capped to 200m.
  

Both features are optional and in both cases only limited movement is permitted, with about 200 meters max. radius.

This kind of movement is not achieved through artificially inserted waypoints, but via ordinary domove commands.

This way units are assured to come back to formation (and to stick to planned waypoints) as soon as the move command is fulfilled.

[Tonci87 163]

Well our group tested it on our Dedi and it didn´t work at all. AI was unresponsive and none of the awesome features could be observed. :(

[fabrizio_t 58]

I love the mod, it really opens up the battlefield and makes it much more dynamic, but the game still has that meat-grinder feel to it since the OFP days. I can't play a mission without losing most of my squad, especially if the AI is leading. It's possible to minimize casualties with micro-management as a squad leader, but it feels t forced.

For Arma3 my baseline is the Combined Arms showcase. Right now even wit the AI set to novice by the end of securing the base there was a total of 4 AI left. That just doesn't feel right. I'll accept some casualties, but there has to be a way to make the friendly AI better at surviving the battle.

Sure units survivability should improve and i think bCombat helps with that to some extents.

That said, mission setup does play a role, a fundamental one.

Speaking of Combined Arms showcase, i tried it again today after some time, but probably due to issues with latest DEV patch is now broken for me and not working anymore.

I was able to log the forces on the battlefield though.

In terms of overall balance, i noticed that the flesh of the mission is 15 BLUFOR infantrymen vs. 34 OPFOR foot units.

Sure APCs and CAS will play a role, even if the latter is usually very weak against infantry.

Anyway BLUFOR is attacking an entrenched enemy position almost frontally, from slightly lower ground and with a less than 1:2 ratio in term of infantry strength.

That's not exactly the situation a commander would put his men in, i guess casualties are expected ;)

---------- Post added at 16:35 ---------- Previous post was at 16:33 ----------

Well our group tested it on our Dedi and it didn´t work at all. AI was unresponsive and none of the awesome features could be observed. :(

Ok, was it working for you before v0.16?

---------- Post added at 17:12 ---------- Previous post was at 16:35 ----------

In my experience so far I noticed that the AI will pop smoke in every single firefight. Is the combat performance of AI units that bcombat strives to achive dependent on the use of smoke grenades every time?

Yes AI units are likely to deploy smoke as soon as the get under enemy fire, from distance.

Smoke grenades are useful for hiding both the threatened unit and units nearby, so it's a cheap and effective way to increase group survivability and favour maneuvering.

I'm planning to further refine the feature in the future, to better adapt to situations.

It's an optional feature you can easily disable if wishing so.

Just put bcombat_allow_smoke_grenades = false within config.sqf .

Edited April 29, 2014 by fabrizio_T

[serjames 357]

been running on our two dedicated's since the beta launch... Apart from the Fancy animations.. i.e. roll.. It works Perfectly.

SJ

[fabrizio_t 58]

been running on our two dedicated's since the beta launch... Apart from the Fancy animations.. i.e. roll.. It works Perfectly.

SJ

So you can confirm v0.16 final is still working fine?

Sorry, i can't check it myself, your feedback is appreciated.

[serjames 357]

YES - sorry Fab I assumed you had internal testers.. Actually it's better than the RC from all feedback, more smoke more sneaky-sneaky from OpFor during CBQ etc.

Based on the feedback - actually I've concluded that 16rc wasn't working quite as fully as I thought it was looks like they're really come alive in this version.. so great job...

As I said lots of players thought I was messing with them using zeus..... :P

Hope it helps

SJ

[lordprimate 159]

Yes Fab Final 16 is working very well!! So well i went a head and got the RC 17 files to test

[Tonci87 163]

YES - sorry Fab I assumed you had internal testers.. Actually it's better than the RC from all feedback, more smoke more sneaky-sneaky from OpFor during CBQ etc.

Based on the feedback - actually I've concluded that 16rc wasn't working quite as fully as I thought it was looks like they're really come alive in this version.. so great job...

As I said lots of players thought I was messing with them using zeus..... :P

Hope it helps

SJ

Could you maybe post your configs?

@fabrizio_T I think it worked with the previous version but I´m not 100% sure (our group has had only a few games in Arma 3 so far)

[serjames 357]

Configs ?

I run bCombat Vanilla

SJ

[potemps 1]

Flanking is part of maneuvering (fire & movement), so you can't directly address it with a single setting, it would be an over-simplification.

Flanking is effective only as long as it's well cohordinated with some fire action.

ArmA3 AI already includes flanking routines straight out of the box, but many issues cripple this neat feature.

Regarding flanking, bCombat does basically the following:

• 
  
• Gives AI units more freedom to move: vanilla ArmA 3 units basically shoot on anything in view, whereas with bCombat "4D" criteria (Distance, Direction, Destination and Danger) are factored before taking any shots, hence movement ends playing a bigger role.
  
• Allows multiple units to move and flank quicker (given some constraints), letting them individually using cover / moving to destination without formation needs dragging their movement to a crawl.
  
• Adds overwatching units, laying suppressive fire and watching moving units. Overwatching units will target enemies threatening units from their group.
  
• Lets units better move to cover along the way
  
• Adds morale penalties so that units attacked from flank, back and/or high ground suffer behaviour degradation (in accuracy, courage, ...).
  

All in all it's more complex than that, but this may give a general idea.

bCombat does not introduce any explicit flanking destination (waypoints) though, since that's out-of-scope for a low-level AI mod and potentially mission-breaking.

Its ok, as far as i can see, they do a flanking thing much much more than in vanilla. Im trying to use bcombat with MCC, and group link 5 and results is very good. Along with that im trying to figure out how to make AI to behave more defensive in certain situations "noautoengage" is not the best way to achive it - but then it works fine with Hetman - Artificial Leader. Problem of Arma AI is they engaging system, they always trying to engage no matter of what position they have, they will leave it becouse leader give them order.

And as always i have a question, few months ago i asked what you are planning in future about bcombat - then you said that you are planning to make a bcommand (sorry if im wrong), what is your concept of bcommand ? Im just curious :)

Regards.

[Tonci87 163]

Configs ?

I run bCombat Vanilla

SJ

Any other Mods?

[andersson 285]

So you can confirm v0.16 final is still working fine?

Sorry, i can't check it myself, your feedback is appreciated.

If you want to do tests one a dedicated just start a ded-server locally on your computer, then start A3 and join. All you need is to create a config for it and then look for it on LAN, it will use the same folders as your normal A3 so it will use no extra space.

I always playtest my missions that way before going through the hazzle of uploading it anywhere.

[BinaryMan 1]

I can't complete the combined arms showcase :(

Good work fabrizio! :D

[fabrizio_t 58]

I can't complete the combined arms showcase :(

It's a ARMA 3 (Steam) DEV branch issue, acknowledged by BIS:

This was a nasty one. It appeared only on Steam Development branch, not in our internal build. Also the newly deployed Stable branch patch does not suffer this problem. The fix of the issue with move waypoints (affecting also majority of the playable content) will be on the Development branch with the next update. We are sorry again for the inconvenience.

See also:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?159710-AI-Discussion-(dev-branch)&p=2678645&viewfull=1#post2678645

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?159710-AI-Discussion-(dev-branch)&p=2678663&viewfull=1#post2678663

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?159710-AI-Discussion-(dev-branch)&p=2678915&viewfull=1#post2678915

---------- Post added at 18:12 ---------- Previous post was at 18:04 ----------

YES - sorry Fab I assumed you had internal testers.. Actually it's better than the RC from all feedback, more smoke more sneaky-sneaky from OpFor during CBQ etc.

Based on the feedback - actually I've concluded that 16rc wasn't working quite as fully as I thought it was looks like they're really come alive in this version.. so great job...

As I said lots of players thought I was messing with them using zeus..... :P

Hope it helps

SJ

Yes Fab Final 16 is working very well!! So well i went a head and got the RC 17 files to test

Thank you.

---------- Post added at 18:25 ---------- Previous post was at 18:12 ----------

And as always i have a question, few months ago i asked what you are planning in future about bcombat - then you said that you are planning to make a bcommand (sorry if im wrong), what is your concept of bcommand ? Im just curious :)

Regards.

bCommand should (eventually) take care of broader tactics and lesser strategy, meaning groups level instead of unit level (=bCombat).

Focus would be on threat evaluation and decision making.

I really hope somebody else will do this effectively in the meantime. Less work for me ;)

[BinaryMan 1]

It's a ARMA 3 (Steam) DEV branch issue, acknowledged by BIS:

I'm on stable currently, I meant it as the ai are good!

[fabrizio_t 58]

I'm on stable currently, I meant it as the ai are good!

oh sorry, i misunderstood ;)

[bravo409 13]

is stable-or dev playable ??? Hearing all kinds of stuff so which is it thanks.

[fabrizio_t 58]

is stable-or dev playable ??? Hearing all kinds of stuff so which is it thanks.

Steam development branch is bugged. Stable is fine i think.

[Bouben 3]

bCommand should (eventually) take care of broader tactics and lesser strategy, meaning groups level instead of unit level (=bCombat).

Focus would be on threat evaluation and decision making.

I really hope somebody else will do this effectively in the meantime. Less work for me ;)

So, how would it be different from HETMAN?

[lordprimate 159]

So, how would it be different from HETMAN?

because it will be built with bcombat in mind and it is not made by the same author.. so its going to be different...