AI issue: Static ai behavior lowers gameplay.

[brynjard 2]

Hi!

I've thought alot about this, especially after my "feedback tracker" was closed.(and i guess rejected).

First of all I just want to say; Arma 3 is a great game and the best nearest thing to a mil sim.

You developers have a very busy days at the office, so I can understand ofcourse.

anyway; The reason for making this thread is; I've been a squad/team lead myself in real life and I remember the effort we made training the guys, and how important this is. When it comes to a firefight it is matter of life and death.

Missing some military tactic methods.

- your squad taking fire; you don't need orders for taking cover. That's what soldiers doo. You hit the ground returning fire and trying to find immediate cover. Second(s) later you get a order from your lead what to do(which direction to move or stay put) If not going to move it's time to find better cover.

- when manoeuvre a infantery squad through a firefight(offensive and defensive). The cover and move is not realistic, it's more like chaos. Is it possible to make a function where the squad works together as a team "Cover&Move"?

- Individual soldier skills. e.g when on patrol, and you are stopping your patrol; why doesn't they crouch and secure 360 degrees? IRL situation you as a soldier are obligated to move a couple of yards or feet out of formation and securing your sector. You don't need orders for that. If you are given any it would be: "Soldier, why the hell are you looking at your boots? Do your fucking job and watch your sector

This should be implented in "Aware" mode and "stealth"

- CQB(the hard part)

Clearing room and buildings is maybee to hard, because it's so difficult IRL. But maybe a basic. 2 guys stacking up each side of the door and going in at the same time. 1 to the left and 1 to the right.

BUT apearence in urban areas is to slow to micro manangin. And maybe could be rather easy to make a function.

Squad moving down a street, it would help if each squad member using corners and wall as cover as they advance.

All this would make the AI and AI commanding more dynamic

Check out this thred. Great guy whith good ideas.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?176244-AI-Overhaul-Reactive-Squads&highlight=commanding

[mamasan8 11]

I use DAC in one of my missions and AI do use corners quite often.

Rest are good suggestions. Question is how much CPU-time they would take, I assume. AI is quite heavy on the CPU as it is.

Current AI react a bit like hens when under fire. No teamplay, running this way and that.

Let's say a team of 10 soldiers. 2-3 could be in cover, suppressing, while the rest either retreat or attack. Jogging in zig zag isn't that efficient.

[brynjard 2]

I use DAC in one of my missions and AI do use corners quite often.

Rest are good suggestions. Question is how much CPU-time they would take, I assume. AI is quite heavy on the CPU as it is.

Current AI react a bit like hens when under fire. No teamplay, running this way and that.

Let's say a team of 10 soldiers. 2-3 could be in cover, suppressing, while the rest either retreat or attack. Jogging in zig zag isn't that efficient.

Do you make your own missions with DAC or du you edit existing?

I personally don't have time for editing or making my own. I'm not easily satisfied, can't just put a couple of patrols out and hunt them with my squad.

So if i was going to make I would have to make some effort and time learning how to make scripts, understand the system etc.

[h - 169]

Wholeheartedly agree with OP.

While in contact the AI should also stop running accross my LOF, or if they do at least let me know they're about to, slightly annoying when you've just got a bead on enemy and fire on that same moment some AI team mate runs in front of you and catches the bullet instead. That hen comparison is quite accurate, a headless hen..

I really really hope that at least with the upcoming expansion BIS would finally go and try to re-set and re-teach the AI brain.

[oldy41 61]

Agreed.

While generally AI has been improved significantly during the series there is still much headroom.

I would also say the focus should be on the basics like suppression (in particular the receiving end), behavior under fire and CQB.

Mods like tpw, bcombat and ffis have already demonstrated that much can be achieved wrt those areas.

[silverwave 11]

Totally agreed.

I've made this post a while back. I'm resurrecting it because I don't think it would be too hard to implement (although I'm pretty sure this won't be implemented by BI, maybe more by a modder but anyway). I'm mostly a solo player and playing with AI is very immersion breaking because mostly of what OP mentioned.

Here's my suggestions, in addition to what have been already mentioned:

Basic contact maneuvers should be easy to execute with AI controlled units.

By that I mean: You are advancing in the field in a wedge formation and you get fired upon.

1. Everyone fires 2-3 rounds in the approximate direction of the enemy to have it pinned-down.

2. Usually, you start crawling to form a line facing the enemy to maximize fire power.

3. You then dedicate a portion of the squad/team to provide suppressing fire (at the moment, when you ask suppressive fire, nothing happens)

4. You will then pop some smoke if available and the remaining soldiers (not part of the suppression fire) will follow the team leader to go on flanking.

5. Once at the start line, suppressive fire will start and then converge away from the flanking section as flanking advance toward enemy.

6. At close distance, grenades will be thrown.

7. You then consolidate by recalling the support section into forming an all-around defense on your position.

At the moment, this is what I need to do to be able to do that (and most of the time, it just wouldn't work properly).

I get fired upon, I need to:

1. Tell my guys to get down.

2. Tell them to get into cover.

3. Tell them to form a line.

4. Ask few of them to stay there (which is confusingly called : Wait for me).

5. Throw myself some smoke, because AI is incapable of doing this on their own.

6. Ask the assault section to form a file.

7. Ask them to hold fire not to reveal our position (at least, if someone pops up close, they will still shoot).

8. When on the start line, ask them to form line.

9. Ask the support team to start suppressive fire (which they won't).

10. Throw myself some grenades because AI is incapable of doing it.

11. Ask the assault section to open fire.

12. If the support section was actually doing suppressive fire, I would probably need to ask them to converge fire away from the assault section because they probably wouldn't do it by themselves.

13. Ask the support section to cease fire when it's obvious they converged so much that's is impossible they hit an enemy anymore.

14. Ask the support section to regroup.

15. Ask everyone to form an all-around defense (which is called Diamond... which is not exactly the same as an all-around-defense, but let's pretend it's fine).

Here's what I'd expect I would need to tell my team.

We get fired upon while in open field (they should never do that in CQB!)

1. I don't ask anything to my guys, they are professional soldiers and they know they need to fire few rounds in the approximate direction and then get down and into cover on their own.

2. They would automatically form a line in the direction of the enemy by crawling or quickly sprinting in crouch if they are far.

3. I ask one of my group "You are support team." They implicitly know they need to stay there and shoot at the enemy with slow but constant fire.

4. I tell the rest "You are assault team" so they know they'll have to pop smoke now, then follow me in a file formation.

5. When I reach my destination, I tell my assault team : "Form line".

6. I tell all my guys "H-Hour now" (or something like "Start Assault"). Automatically, my support team start the suppressing fire with rapid fire and they will auto-converge the fire away from the assault section and stop firing when they converged enough (can be calculated with an angle, for ex. when they converged 45 degrees, they stop the suppress fire).

At the same time, my assault team throws grenades then start moving forward toward the enemy position by covering-moving each others.

7. When I'm satisfied that we eliminated the enemy, I tell everyone to "Reorg" (short for reorganize) and they regroup and form an all-around defense around me.

* For the purist, yeah I know I skipped few steps in the combat drill but they would be probably too hard to implement and wouldn't be that intuitive for the non-military players.

[brynjard 2]

Silverwave, I agree.

It's all about cover and move. And keeping some form of structure in team/squad so you don't get blue on blue.

[Bouben 3]

6. Ask the assault section to form a file.

Just a little detail so that you and others know:

You actually can't set a formation to a specific part of your squad. You always do it globally for the whole squad, unfortunately.

[DancZer 65]

Silverwave: I totally agree with you. I can't even do that commands what you wrote. I always mess up which number should i press for what.

My common pattern is:

while{alive player}do{

_k = number;

if(!isCorrect _x)then{

backspace;

};

};

One more thing i missing is that the AI don't know anything about the mission. Where are threats?! Where is the objective?! What is the objective?! The briefing is only for humans.

[fabrizio_t 58]

Totally agreed.

I've made this post a while back. I'm resurrecting it because I don't think it would be too hard to implement (although I'm pretty sure this won't be implemented by BI, maybe more by a modder but anyway). I'm mostly a solo player and playing with AI is very immersion breaking because mostly of what OP mentioned.

Here's my suggestions, in addition to what have been already mentioned:

Basic contact maneuvers should be easy to execute with AI controlled units.

By that I mean: You are advancing in the field in a wedge formation and you get fired upon.

1. Everyone fires 2-3 rounds in the approximate direction of the enemy to have it pinned-down.

2. Usually, you start crawling to form a line facing the enemy to maximize fire power.

3. You then dedicate a portion of the squad/team to provide suppressing fire (at the moment, when you ask suppressive fire, nothing happens)

4. You will then pop some smoke if available and the remaining soldiers (not part of the suppression fire) will follow the team leader to go on flanking.

5. Once at the start line, suppressive fire will start and then converge away from the flanking section as flanking advance toward enemy.

6. At close distance, grenades will be thrown.

7. You then consolidate by recalling the support section into forming an all-around defense on your position.

Did you try bCombat, out of curiosity?

Looks to me it's close to what you're looking for.

Except:

1. Everyone fires 2-3 rounds in the approximate direction of the enemy to have it pinned-down.

Not everyone will fire.

Units in cover and machinegunners are likely to open fire and give "overwatch".

If enemy is far enough group may prefer to keep moving unless threatened.

Units will shoot back aggressively however, if fired upon.

2. Usually, you start crawling to form a line facing the enemy to maximize fire power.

Sadly formations work pretty hit & miss in combat mode (when they work at all), so they're not changed in bCombat.

Other than that, bCombat AI groups tend to behave as per your 1-7 points.

By the way, they provide suppressive fire and suffer suppression-related penalties.

Some RTS-like modifiers are applied, for instance suppressive fire has maximum impact when applied from flank, back or higher ground.

There's more, you may want to check it yourself.

Edited August 27, 2014 by fabrizio_T

[silverwave 11]

Thanks for the answer!

Yeah, I did tried bCombat and ASR ai.

They are both very great!

I'm not sure though I've been totally able to do those steps.

Yes, they do react to fire more or less efficiently, get down to cover and suppress without me needing to ask them.

I can manually tell squad members (or a whole group) to "Wait for me" (stop following me) to provide cover.

I can never ask them to actually start heavy suppressive fire, though.

See, usually you have two types of suppressive fire : slow fire and rapid fire.

Currently, there's no way to manage that.

Also, AI will never converge fire. They'll shoot at enemies they see, whatever close they might be from an ally. I could live with that but I've seen some friendly fire from the AI happening because of that, though.

I'll retest it when I have time though, I think I might have tested this with an older version of bCombat.

[sttosin 67]

^^May I suggest dialing up the suppression fire rate in the bcombat config file? Do it for both Machine gunners and other units.

[silverwave 11]

I've tried it yesterday.

It is in fact better with ASR Ai or bCombat than vanilla but it's still painful to do proper Advance to Contact drills.

For starters, seems like AI don't understand how to properly use cover.

Most of the time they'll pick cover that doesn't even protect them from enemy shots by getting behind the wrong side of a wall, for example.

Like I mentioned previously, they also only ever shoot at enemies. I'm pretty sure that's an engine limitation, but it is not possible to ask AI to provide fire suppression in a zone.

So, if they don't actually SEE an enemy, they'll never fire, which kinds of defeat the purpose of a suppression fire: you want to constantly fire so that enemy can't show their face.

I'm pretty sure that kind of feature is out of the scope of ARMA 3 engine. Something like this would be awesome:

I find it really difficult to manage formations with AI.

I'd like to be able to form a line facing a certain direction.

It seems like they align base on your direction of movement but it's not super precise so I often end up having my line of fire not facing the enemy.

I'd at least like the AI to CONSISTENTLY align themselves based on the direction I'm looking at.

And... hell, I should be God Almighty when I ask my team to adopt a stance. If I say "Aware", stop being freaking combat mode. There's a reason, I want to be doing a flanking with a certain group but they'll just won't stop leap-frogging so if I'm doing 1 km jog to flank the enemy, it would take them forever as they "covering/moving" all the way.

---------- Post added at 10:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:45 AM ----------

^^May I suggest dialing up the suppression fire rate in the bcombat config file? Do it for both Machine gunners and other units.

Nah, you'd need two types of rate of fire.

One slow (1 bullet every 4-5 sec per unit), one fast (5 bullets / sec per unit).

If I change the config settings, it will still have only one type of fire rate.

[Bouben 3]

There's a reason, I want to be doing a flanking with a certain group but they'll just won't stop leap-frogging so if I'm doing 1 km jog to flank the enemy, it would take them forever as they "covering/moving" all the way.

Use "move" command for units that should be flanking. They will move ASAP without leap-frogging. You would have to follow them, though, and tell them to stop if you don't want them to go suicidal.

[sttosin 67]

Also checkout zapat GetTactical mod for better micromanagement.

[sttosin 67]

PS. I've been dying for a system like that. OR something like the full spectrum warrior game suppression commands.

[subunit 31]

So, if they don't actually SEE an enemy, they'll never fire,

I'm 98% sure this is not true- I've definitely seen AI fire at a wall they've seen me move behind, despite LOS being broken by the wall itself. They'll at times continue to fire at the last-known location, so you can trick them by popping out in another spot.

[fabrizio_t 58]

I've tried it yesterday.

It is in fact better with ASR Ai or bCombat than vanilla but it's still painful to do proper Advance to Contact drills.

For starters, seems like AI don't understand how to properly use cover.

Most of the time they'll pick cover that doesn't even protect them from enemy shots by getting behind the wrong side of a wall, for example.

Like I mentioned previously, they also only ever shoot at enemies. I'm pretty sure that's an engine limitation, but it is not possible to ask AI to provide fire suppression in a zone.

So, if they don't actually SEE an enemy, they'll never fire, which kinds of defeat the purpose of a suppression fire: you want to constantly fire so that enemy can't show their face.

I'm pretty sure that kind of feature is out of the scope of ARMA 3 engine. Something like this would be awesome:

I find it really difficult to manage formations with AI.

I'd like to be able to form a line facing a certain direction.

It seems like they align base on your direction of movement but it's not super precise so I often end up having my line of fire not facing the enemy.

I'd at least like the AI to CONSISTENTLY align themselves based on the direction I'm looking at.

And... hell, I should be God Almighty when I ask my team to adopt a stance. If I say "Aware", stop being freaking combat mode. There's a reason, I want to be doing a flanking with a certain group but they'll just won't stop leap-frogging so if I'm doing 1 km jog to flank the enemy, it would take them forever as they "covering/moving" all the way.

---------- Post added at 10:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:45 AM ----------

Nah, you'd need two types of rate of fire.

One slow (1 bullet every 4-5 sec per unit), one fast (5 bullets / sec per unit).

If I change the config settings, it will still have only one type of fire rate.

What you say is right.

Speaking of bCombat the range of improvements for PLAYER led groups is a minor subset of the features.

It's like that not to take control away from player.

For instance when leader is player AI units do not use special move to cover routine, as that would make them uncontrollable.

Speaking of AI led teams instead, they do use enhanced cover routines as well as they do suppression fire (usually too much!), even shooting through objects.

They're also able to make pin-and-flank maneuvering, to deploy smoke for concealement and to lob grenades over obstacles.

Speaking of ArmA3, as you noticed there are still core issues, namely combat mode not being overridable and formation being almost completely broken in combat.

I do agree these are sensible problems (as well as bad pathfinding), i hope BIS will solve them some day.

---------- Post added at 15:24 ---------- Previous post was at 15:21 ----------

NOTE: bCombat settings for suppressive fire express duration of fire, not frequency. In my modding perience i was never able to reliably control AI rate of fire.