[OPEN BETA] [SP] bCombat infantry AI Mod

[svarun 16]

You're back!

 

Bcombat was my fav AI mod. I really hope it gets updated for Apex. :)

[Flib 0]

Hi everyone! I'm new to Arma and I love the idea of bCombat. But I'm having the weird problem where my stamina bar disappears when bComabt is active.

 

I tried finding a solution, but none of the ones I found worked, including "disable/enable stamina bar". I couldn't find any bcombat.sqf file to edit using the suggestion much earlier in this thread, either.

 

Suggestions?

[fabrizio_t 58]

Hi everyone! I'm new to Arma and I love the idea of bCombat. But I'm having the weird problem where my stamina bar disappears when bComabt is active.

 

I tried finding a solution, but none of the ones I found worked, including "disable/enable stamina bar". I couldn't find any bcombat.sqf file to edit using the suggestion much earlier in this thread, either.

 

Suggestions?

Open config.sqf, set:

bcombat_allow_fatigue = true; 

[fabrizio_t 58]

I've just begun testing bCombat v0.20 - "Apex", in combination with Unsung 3.0 mod.
Great fun in the jungle, except for some minor issues.

 

New version will bring re-balancing of features as well as cleanup / removal of deprecated components ( e.g. bDetect ).
It will also take advantage from a handful of recently introduced scripting commands.

No ETA for now, more info will follow depending on the outcome of testing.

[kremator 1065]

That is good to hear fab !  Looking forward to seeing what you can do with these new commands.  We need a SMART AI  - we are depending on you!  The battlefield needs good tactics, suppression and automatic medic to tend the wounded - simple eh ?

 

As ever, if you need a tester, you know where I am :)

[lordprimate 159]

Awesome Fab good so see you around diddo on the tester thing...

[tpw 2315]

Great to see one of the legendary scripters for Arma back on the tools.

[SteveJA 12]

Absolute legend. BCombat has such a huge impact on how much i enjoy Arma. Awesome new to hear that are creating an update!

[serjames 357]

Echoing what the others have said. I think we've all been keeping the faith and waiting for the "second coming" :-) so it's good to hear you are interested In a new version.

Can I just request one thing....

Please don't forget Multiplayer. I know it kinda worked before, but it was definitely a little flakey in MP. Really looking forward to what you come up with. Likewise if you need testers let me know. SJ

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[drepanon 10]

I'm just back from tonight's ArmA session. We finally decided to give this mod a go. We didn't test it before since it wasn't expected to work in MP.

 

The point is, it does!

Up until tonight we were using ASR AI3 + FFIS. We were kinda fed up with the AI standing up in obviously stupid cover under fire and basically being extremely static. With bCombat, we were very pleased to see dynamic AI movement from cover to cover, real suppressive fire and generally very human-like behavior.

To my mind, some points are worth improving:

• CQB radar: I think the AI has a very narrow field of view and sometimes misses very obvious enemies because they're a bit too far on their flanks (while they'd be perfectly able to see them if they kept their head on a swivel). Should I play with bcombat_cqb_radar_params to improve this?
• More grenade throws! Even when the enemy is known and near, I think the AI still misses a lot of opportunities to throw them 'nades
• We had a slight problem with an AI group packing around a telephone pole because it was the only available cover...
• Could we get a status whether this should or shouldn't be used in MP and why?

With that in mind, this mod is truly a joy to use. We got a much, much increased challenge tonight. Thanks!

[Vasily.B 529]

I'm just back from tonight's ArmA session. We finally decided to give this mod a go. We didn't test it before since it wasn't expected to work in MP.

 

The point is, it does!

Up until tonight we were using ASR AI3 + FFIS. We were kinda fed up with the AI standing up in obviously stupid cover under fire and basically being extremely static. With bCombat, we were very pleased to see dynamic AI movement from cover to cover, real suppressive fire and generally very human-like behavior.

To my mind, some points are worth improving:

• CQB radar: I think the AI has a very narrow field of view and sometimes misses very obvious enemies because they're a bit too far on their flanks (while they'd be perfectly able to see them if they kept their head on a swivel). Should I play with bcombat_cqb_radar_params to improve this?
• More grenade throws! Even when the enemy is known and near, I think the AI still misses a lot of opportunities to throw them 'nades
• We had a slight problem with an AI group packing around a telephone pole because it was the only available cover...
• Could we get a status whether this should or shouldn't be used in MP and why?

With that in mind, this mod is truly a joy to use. We got a much, much increased challenge tonight. Thanks!

From what i remember there was config, so you could increase grenades using for AI. PArt about telephone pole is best, i've meet 3 Ai hiding behind electric pole :P There is nothing you can do in config about it, but fabrizio_t will surely improve this, right ? Adding something for Ai to ignore covers with radious = 3M or something like that.....

[fabrizio_t 58]

I'm just back from tonight's ArmA session. We finally decided to give this mod a go. We didn't test it before since it wasn't expected to work in MP.

 

The point is, it does!

Up until tonight we were using ASR AI3 + FFIS. We were kinda fed up with the AI standing up in obviously stupid cover under fire and basically being extremely static. With bCombat, we were very pleased to see dynamic AI movement from cover to cover, real suppressive fire and generally very human-like behavior.

To my mind, some points are worth improving:

• CQB radar: I think the AI has a very narrow field of view and sometimes misses very obvious enemies because they're a bit too far on their flanks (while they'd be perfectly able to see them if they kept their head on a swivel). Should I play with bcombat_cqb_radar_params to improve this?
• More grenade throws! Even when the enemy is known and near, I think the AI still misses a lot of opportunities to throw them 'nades
• We had a slight problem with an AI group packing around a telephone pole because it was the only available cover...
• Could we get a status whether this should or shouldn't be used in MP and why?

With that in mind, this mod is truly a joy to use. We got a much, much increased challenge tonight. Thanks!

 

CQB radar is a complex feature, technically and balancing-wise.

It sits on top of many other features, i'll give a glimpse of what's under the hood.

 

Basically, you don't really want to have foes always identified and targeted at distance on sides or that will end up hindering flanking tactics and overall movement. 

 

CQB radar fits AI with a wide FOV ( > 200° ), but that's costrained to a low maximum distance ( bcombat_cqb_radar_max_distance = 75 mt ).

There are many more contraints for an enemy to be "seen" by CQB radar: 

• enemy should be visible (ehm ... obviously)
• spotter unit skill should be high enough (a bit of randomization plays here) 
• spotter unit should not be suppressed already
• spotter unit should not be busy with higher priority tasks ( e.g. movement to cover, covering leader, returning fire on thtreatening units ). I'm not telling about bCombat tasks here not to giving headache ;)

 

Please consider that even whenever a unit sucessfully detects some enemy on its side it won't necessarily open fire on it, as any enemy is conceived as target of opportunity unless it's actively threatenting.

bCombat AI units won't necessarily pull the trigger on any targets, rather they consistently return fire if attacked (unless heavily suppressed) and possibily return fire on enemies threatening their leader or other squaddies.

The reason being AI units have a destination to be reached (current waypoint) as well as rules of engagements ( combat mode ): fulfilling these is higher priority that brainless skirmishing.

 

Targets evaluation is peculiar of bCombat, units are expected not to shoot non-threatening enemies in many circumstances, for example:

• if a unit is flanking enemies and moving at good speed it's very likely it will avoid opening fire on non-threatening enemies on sides till reaching an advantage position (or being pinned down)
• other enemy targets may be in sight and better preferred targets ( eg. assigned targets, enemies threatenting group leader or current waypoint ).
• unit may be busy with special actions (e.g. move to cover, move to heal, embark / disembark, ...)

The main difference between bCombat against vanilla AI / other mods is the the balancing of movement vs. fire, whereas vanilla is "move > detect > shoot" ending up bland and static.

Movement is central in bCombat as suppressive effects on morale are way higher for attacking from side / back and higher ground and this encourages playing more tactically.

 

 

About grenades, they're usually overkill in bCombat. Deadly, as units may lob them over roofs for instance.

However you may want to add some "virtual" grenades to units ( increase bcombat_grenades_additional_number ) and / or increase frequency by reducng timeouts ( bcombat_grenades_timeout ).

You may play with distances as well ( bcombat_grenades_distance ).

Keep in mind that bCombat units won't usually lob grenades at visible enemies, for obvious reasons.

 

About the good old "pole" ( and it's brother, the bulletproof iron fence ) they're a couple problematic objects sitting there since ArmA 2.

Vanilla considers them valid "cover" too. The issue is they have a large bounding box and this tricks the cover checking routines of bCombat as well.

Only way around would be blacklisting of them, not really sure if worth it.

 

About MP: it works as you noticed except for minor issues, as long as AI in local to server.

[tpM 478]

^

Sorry if I say something stupid, but wouldn't it be easier and performance-friendly to simply just ask someone to model these very primitive objects in the same proportions as the original ones - but with correct geometry ofcourse - and then write a replacement cfg for them?

[drepanon 10]

...

 

Thanks for the heads-up, much appreciated.

 

I got the angle wrong about the CQB radar, I used to believe the total viewing angle was twice the amount specified in the config file. My bad, 208° seems pretty good.

I understand your philosophy about movement being a priority over fire (I myself support aggressive movement tactics).

 

Yesterday's tests where very good, except for a few instances where the AI simply did not engage an unthreatening enemy at close range. The enemy was definitely spotted, was not moving (neither was the good guy) and was oblivious to the presence of the good guy. See here:

 

http://imgur.com/a/QlFlr

 

What could explain this behavior?

 

Another suggestion: could we improve the AI's behavior at long ranges? ArmA (vanilla / modded) has always been really shitty about this, AIs can be sniped at high ranges (let's say 500 m) and they do little more than falling to the ground. Is it normal that the usual "move to cover / flank" behavior goes out the window at higher ranges?

 

Thanks again for your fantastic work.

[fabrizio_t 58]

Thanks for the heads-up, much appreciated.

 

I got the angle wrong about the CQB radar, I used to believe the total viewing angle was twice the amount specified in the config file. My bad, 208° seems pretty good.

I understand your philosophy about movement being a priority over fire (I myself support aggressive movement tactics).

 

Yesterday's tests where very good, except for a few instances where the AI simply did not engage an unthreatening enemy at close range. The enemy was definitely spotted, was not moving (neither was the good guy) and was oblivious to the presence of the good guy. See here:

 

http://imgur.com/a/QlFlr

 

What could explain this behavior?

 

Another suggestion: could we improve the AI's behavior at long ranges? ArmA (vanilla / modded) has always been really shitty about this, AIs can be sniped at high ranges (let's say 500 m) and they do little more than falling to the ground. Is it normal that the usual "move to cover / flank" behavior goes out the window at higher ranges?

 

Thanks again for your fantastic work.

 

About the AI unit not reacting: it may be the unit is "stuck", as it happens sometimes in vanilla game.

Not really sure, but it seems to  me (looking at the AI feet area) that another dead AI unit may intersect the alive one, this usually gives targeting problems to AI.

Otherwise this kind of behaviour may be caused by heavy suppression or by fleeing, but that's hard to tell without debug info / debug balloons active.

 

• Heavily suppressed units lose courage and they may end pinned.
• Fleeing units have unpredictable behaviour (vanilla behaviour).

 

---

 

About behaviour at long range: flanking from high distance may be questionable, however the point is that targeted units should not necessarily move or  flank when targeted.

Think about different situations:

Are they supposed to be holding the position the moved to?

Are the cleared to attack that far ?

Are they able to detect ( hear, see) attacker  from that far ?

if you wish to experiment, you may try this and check what happens (don't know):

• give to targeted  AI group a GUARD behaviour
• set them to  FIRE ENGAGE / AT WILL 

then within bCombat config.sqf set:

bcombat_degradation_distance = 2000; // let's exclude features degradation for a bigger range from player position
bcombat_allow_hearing_coef = 1;  // this allows enemy to HEAR shots from a distance equal to muzzle speed, e.g 800-900 mt for long range rifles. Normally it's capped to 400-500. 
bcombat_fire_back_group_max_enemy_distance = 1000;  // allows enemy to react to incoming fire from farther, provided he detects the shooter and weapon range, constrained to his ability, allows him to take some far shots
bcombat_suppressive_fire_distance = [50, 1000];   // Raises max suppressive fire distance to 1000 mt.
bcombat_investigate_max_distance = 1500; // allows units to investigate way farther 
bcombat_targeting_max_distance = [500, 1500];  // clears units to move farther from actual position and assigned waypoint in order to chase enemies

See what happens, i'm curious.

All this is only for sake of experimenting as it may have some sensible computational overhead.

EDIT:

when targeted from 500 mt. distance and farther enemy units should still be able to move to nearby cover, unless ArmA native close-bullet detection is failing for very far shots. It could well be.

[fabrizio_t 58]

^

Sorry if I say something stupid, but wouldn't it be easier and performance-friendly to simply just ask someone to model these very primitive objects in the same proportions as the original ones - but with correct geometry ofcourse - and then write a replacement cfg for them?

 

Sure, but not really my cup of tea.

I dislike the idea of micromanaging "wrong" objects as it's not much feature/future proof.

[kremator 1065]

I keep checking for my PMs for testing fab ;)

[lerbert 10]

Hi, any chance to use this on dedicated server for MP?

[froggyluv 2133]

 This mod still suffers from a huge cheat/bug in which Ive brought up before -that being enemy AI retain too high a knowsabout for too long and know exactly wwhere you are hidden when in a building in an unrealistic way: skip to 3:05 if just wanna see the hunt

 

 

[Quillon 2]

 This mod still suffers from a huge cheat/bug in which Ive brought up before -that being enemy AI retain too high a knowsabout for too long and know exactly wwhere you are hidden when in a building in an unrealistic way: skip to 3:05 if just wanna see the hunt

 

 

 

 

Its not a bug, the mod's so advanced that it handled the soldier's asking the civilians along the way for your whereabouts and he entered from the back door on purpose, we can't see clearly due to engine limitations :D

[froggyluv 2133]

That would actually be pretty amazing -if civilians starting pointing in your general or exact location depending on your standing with the populace. Sadly BI never gave us pointing animations..

[serjames 357]

... Sigh. It's the little things right !

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[fabrizio_t 58]

 This mod still suffers from a huge cheat/bug in which Ive brought up before -that being enemy AI retain too high a knowsabout for too long and know exactly wwhere you are hidden when in a building in an unrealistic way: skip to 3:05 if just wanna see the hunt

 

 

 

bCombat does not rely on knowsabout ( an obsolete command ) except for some quick pre-checking.

 

bCombat does not cheat either, as it uses perceived enemy position as it's known by the game itself.

This information is then actively used to make AI move on to investigate, something vanilla doesn't do despite having the needed info.

So the point is whether perceived position is realistically given out by BIS engine. 

I've definitely seen issues with detection in plain vanilla ArmA3.

 

[Vasily.B 529]

bCombat does not rely on knowsabout ( an obsolete command ) except for some quick pre-checking.

 

bCombat does not cheat either, as it uses perceived enemy position as it's known by the game itself.

This information is then actively used to make AI move on to investigate, something vanilla doesn't do despite having the needed info.

So the point is whether perceived position is realistically given out by BIS engine. 

I've definitely seen issues with detection in plain vanilla ArmA3.

 

AFAIK, Its arma related bug. I cannot hide in house, beacuse ai know i'm here, same if i come in town and hear reports from my squad members Enemy - 100M - i'm looking at the map, and see enemy in building, even if he is covered/invisible from our side. You can report it on Arma feedback tracker.

[fabrizio_t 58]

AFAIK, Its arma related bug. I cannot hide in house, beacuse ai know i'm here, same if i come in town and hear reports from my squad members Enemy - 100M - i'm looking at the map, and see enemy in building, even if he is covered/invisible from our side. You can report it on Arma feedback tracker.

No, you can definitely hide into houses in ArmA 3.

There's 2 ways an AI unit will detect you there:

 

1) it has some line-of-sight on you, even just on some inches of your body through a window

2) it can hear you, meaning it's close and you're moving / making noise

 

The potential issue imho is AI is very sensitive and accurate in its detection, probably a tad too much.

This especially applies to subsequent re-detection.

EDIT:

To clarify my impressions: i've run first mission of Apex campaign a few weeks ago.

Vanilla.

I did move to some crest, was detected by AI enemies about 100 meters away and fired upon.

I crawled back.

Then i moved to their flank by keeping concealed behind the crest.

I kept some distance too.

As soon as i popped out of vegetation / crest  almost at their back and at about 100 meters they opened fire on me.

I was still crawling.