ai command dlc C2 -Command And Control

[mad_cheese 593]

Request?  Is there anyway you could make a command for one (or two, three) of your guys to follow you (even into buildings) say 1 meter back (or 2).   [...] Would be great if you could buddy-up one AI member to follow you into locations.

That's a cool idea! BUT at the moment 90% of the addon are only at work while you actively use the functions. I'd like to avoid making constant checks to see if the player is in a building, the only way I know how to do it would be too costly on performance to make over and over.. However, someone made an addon that enhances the AI's behavior within a formation, I think it's a great idea for that and you should bring it up!

 

My issue is that while it works in general, sometimes it is extremely slow to load things up, such as the tablet taking 10 seconds or so to pop up, or my character will take a good 20-30 seconds to say the new formation if using Ctrl+F, which of course means the AI soldiers will not change until that is said. 

On an empty map, or a map with next to no units it works quite well, although when used in a full mission, it slows down, even if FPS is good. This reason alone almost confirms my suspicions of a probable performance issue on my end,

That doesn't sound nice.. I do experience a similar lag whenever I play a mission that just smacks 200 units/vehicles into the editor, so naturally the performance will stink. Also when using ALIVE! , sometimes there's half a second delay orthe HUD indicators get laggy. But 10-30 seconds are MENTAL, that's not normal at all. I'm not an expert but from what I think I know, your computer is getting hit by a shitstorm of commands, can't handle them all and thus executes them in sequence - Since opening the table is not exactly heavy on performance, I expect the lag to be due to something else or maybe a conflict that I would like to know more about. Can you try to disable all mods besides CBA and C2 to see if the issue persists?

[john111 76]

Noticed something:When I add everybody to a group ,Team Green,given them WPs,and seen them carry out out the order,the formation Control+F disappears and so does the Tablet too.

There is no way to  use it again ,must restart.

Hope for a fix soon.Thanks.

[froggyluv 2136]

Best tool for rapidly deploying troops in coordinated urban assaults hands down. What do you think about adding GO commands to compliment the timed way point commands? Also maybe out of this mods scope but how about macro commands like Assault, Defend, Round Defense and Clear Building? Would be awesome

[mad_cheese 593]

Noticed something:When I add everybody to a group ,Team Green,given them WPs,and seen them carry out out the order,the formation Control+F disappears and so does the Tablet too.

There is no way to  use it again ,must restart.

Hope for a fix soon.Thanks.

oh wow!! thanks for the report, I'll check it out.I think there's potential for bugs in the color buttons, just as with the report of units unwantedly switching teamcolors. I have my way to use those controls and maybe I accidently avoid the error that way. But in the end: it's still a bug!

 

Best tool for rapidly deploying troops in coordinated urban assaults hands down. What do you think about adding GO commands to compliment the timed way point commands? Also maybe out of this mods scope but how about macro commands like Assault, Defend, Round Defense and Clear Building? Would be awesome

Thanks Froggy! Are you talking about a pause/resume option? I really want this too, as my role model GR used to have it. "Stop" didnt mean "stop and forget everything I told you" in GR, it just meant "wait". The reason why I don't have it yet is because I would not be happy without a good "stopping routine". Like: "Hold on dude, stand by but move to cover and and stay alert". Basically the functionality would be there to get something acceptable happening, it's just a lot of work and I need to make a huge adjustment to the structure which is not very elastic at the moment. I will do it though. Now I really hope that's what you meant otherwise I hope you enjoyed me wasting your time :D

[luckylegs 19]

GO commands

Did you mean like Go Codes? E.g. "Alpha, Go! Bravo, Go!" etc etc... A way to synchronise waypoint advancement across separate elements? I'm thinking of the original Rainbow 6 games and Door Kickers.

 

Would be useful for setting up an assault when you're unsure of how long it would take each team to get in position.

 

Unrelated edit: also, mad_cheese, if you haven't played Door Kickers I would highly recommend it to you (and probably to most others reading this thread); it's an outstanding top-down tactics game.

[tmp95 16]

Go Codes like R6/RS would be fantastic.  Timed assaults on rooms was fantastic back in R6 days

[froggyluv 2136]

 Yes yes yes, thank you luckylegs after reading Mad Cheese's post ...simply forgot what I wanted :p

[mad_cheese 593]

oh snap! you guys!

 

 

okay I see, more the rainbow six deal. I did think about adding conditions of sorts before. Those could actually even be called "alpha, bravo" etc like in RS, it would also correspond with radio triggers in A3 for example. It would just not address an actual fire team "alpha" but something like "alpha stage", "bravo stage" etc. It would be like a sync but you can manually give the order, I'll look into that! Great idea.

 

Also maybe out of this mods scope but how about macro commands like Assault, Defend, Round Defense and Clear Building? Would be awesome

Hmm I do like that concept but have only limited ideas of what that could look like. Man static weapons, take buildings, take cover… it sort of ends there. If you have ideas concerning behavior, don't hesitate to throw them at me. 'Clearing' a building.. the best bet is to line up units at the doors and send them in with HUD mode, there's not much more that could be done as the behavior is very limited. This way at least you are assured that each unit is taking it's separate position in the building and face out.

 

Unrelated edit: also, mad_cheese, if you haven't played Door Kickers I would highly recommend it to you (and probably to most others reading this thread); it's an outstanding top-down tactics game.

 

I do really want to give that a go!!
EDIT: I did buy it. What a cool game to steal from lol. So yea I feel silly about what I saidbefore, then again it's not rocket science. We're on the same page though, I'll make it happen.
 

[alezil 12]

Hello, today I spent the afternoon testing in HUD mode maneuvers of entry and clear, and it's beautiful. Ai moves efficiently toward the designated positions and eliminates the targets.

In the process, I suffered to put the enemy in interesting locations within the building in 2deditor. until I learned how to make AI to occupy one of the pre-determined positions inside buildings.

 

So that got me thinking: is possible a command in planning mode, which allows the player to indicate one of its soldiers a position within the building to take (soldier, take position 1 or position 3 in that building)? EX: Send soldier (1) enter the building and occupy position 2, and then send soldier (3) go on the other side of the building (with waypoints) and occupy position 4. There seems to be no clear pattern in positions within the building, and this can create a difficulty for players, even so this function can be useful.

 

Now talking in HUD mode and room clearing. From what I understand, the same option to send friendly units occupy certain positions (garrissoning) in a building is also used to make them invade and clear a building.

It would be nice if it were possible in HUD mode lock the position (by pressing L) and alt + mousewheell change which positions inside the building the AI ​​will take the time to do garrison / room cleaning, like we do in open ground.

Anyway, thanks for this great mod.

[mad_cheese 593]

Hello, today I spent the afternoon testing in HUD mode maneuvers of entry and clear, and it's beautiful. Ai moves efficiently toward the designated positions and eliminates the targets.

In the process, I suffered to put the enemy in interesting locations within the building in 2deditor. until I learned how to make AI to occupy one of the pre-determined positions inside buildings.

 

So that got me thinking: is possible a command in planning mode, which allows the player to indicate one of its soldiers a position within the building to take (soldier, take position 1 or position 3 in that building)? EX: Send soldier (1) enter the building and occupy position 2, and then send soldier (3) go on the other side of the building (with waypoints) and occupy position 4. There seems to be no clear pattern in positions within the building, and this can create a difficulty for players, even so this function can be useful.

 

Now talking in HUD mode and room clearing. From what I understand, the same option to send friendly units occupy certain positions (garrissoning) in a building is also used to make them invade and clear a building.

It would be nice if it were possible in HUD mode lock the position (by pressing L) and alt + mousewheell change which positions inside the building the AI ​​will take the time to do garrison / room cleaning, like we do in open ground.

Anyway, thanks for this great mod.

Thanks for the feedback Alezil!

 

I am considering BuildingPositions in Planning-mode, but put it on the 'long goal' list because it demands some heavy problem solving. It's not as interactive as in HUD-mode where aiming height is the factor by which buildingPositions are selected. In planning mode, you would only get indexNumbers and as you noted, there is absolutely no pattern in those and the player will have no idea what they mean. In example, your building may have 15 positions. You would assume that position 1 should be on the ground and position 15 on the roof. And maybe they are! But maybe they're not. They're probably not. :D

 

Your second idea is slave to a similar problem. The height where you point your rifle at the building is the only way to manage buildingPositions at the moment. Anything better than that is "building specific" and I have no idea what to do about it yet. You can use it with individual units and get lucky with the selections. I hear what you're saying, but the truth is that neither the AI nore the buildings were designed for extensive room clearing. You may get frustated that you can't get the indicators on a certain room, when in reality the building does not even have a position defined in that room.

 

Sorry if this was technical.. you hit a nerve with that issue. The problem with A3 compared to other games is it's open-ness. Other games seem to let you do "anything" when they are are actually heavily restricted, Full Spectrum Warrior for example is so restricted you would not believe it. I am debating some helper functions for the player so he has a chance to include his own judgement and assess the situation better, for example a function to show the boundingbox and buildingPositions of an object for a few seconds in both HUD- and Planning-Mode. That would help to get a quick idea of the models and environment, especially for buildingPoses and how objects connect (for example, a long wall may consist of lots of objects and it's hard for the player to distinguish the objects).

 

Next update is pretty much done by the way.

[alezil 12]

Hello, Thanks again for your time and for the careful response.

 

I expected there to be some kind of limitation with Ai and especially with the settings of the buildings. The truth is that I am a layman in these matters and have a very limited view of the problems you faces to make a mod like this.

 

In fact, using the tip of my rifle as a reference I can sometimes select different locations and get a satisfactory raid by the AI, something that is impossible without the C2 HUD Mode.

 

Using the same building as the test site, I managed to get the AI ​​to invade and clear the building for several different angles. I just can not perform better because I lack agility to command several teams of operators (choosing the location for the red team raid, and immediately choose the blue team and indicate to them a position, while red team is on the move, it is very difficult).

 

Other people have commented before about Door Kickers and go codes, maybe that's one of the keys to improve the rooms cleaning: With Go codes, the player would have time to make small adjustments and send the teams  to attack different positions simultaneously.

 

 

As I said before, thanks for the reply.

 

This mod, you've done is perfect, as someone who grew up playing games like SWAT 4 and recently doorkickers I really can not express my gratitude, so once again: thank you.

(sorry for my bad english)

[mad_cheese 593]

Well as it turns out I have to thank you! :D

 

But first, yes, you always need to use the tip of your rifle to change the building positions, for technical reasons the buildingPos detection does not work without it.

 

To keep things brief, as I said you struck a nerve so I got busy yesterday and made planning mode capable of handling buildings. As I expected, my biggest concerns is to design a system that blends into the framework - in the end I got closer than I thought, but there's many small adjusments to make. Once again, the maplines are a pain in the ass.

 

I thought all of this would not be possible because of the distances that aI need to be away from their destination in order to classify them as completed. Turns out that there's a config entry for that (I'm new to that wonderful world) called 'precision'. This improves all of planning mode because now I can always have it perfect for whatever vehicle a unit is controlling. Also, I already had the GoCodes in place, some more tweaks and the building sweep would indeed be controllable via gocodes.

 

So the good news is, I said Arma is not designed for CQB and building sweeps but maybe I underestimated it's capabilities yet another time..

 

The bad news is the "Path Lods" that enterable buildings have. Think of them as train tracks for AI inside of a building, you can easily see them when you send units into a building. The problem: Say a building has two doors, one back one front. You stack up at the front door and send multiple units into the building. You will notice that some units will actually head around the building and enter from the backdoor. I expect the reason for this to be a relation of building position and path lod. So in the end it means you will need to get a feel for what's gonna work.

 

Anyways, I was able to send 2 fireteams down a road clearing buildings one after another on their respective sides of the road. It took me around 10 seconds to set up and was a very rewarding sight.

 

So thanks again guys for the motivation and sorry you postponed the update lol :D

 

 

[kremator 1065]

Sounds great.  Looking forward to the update ... cant play without it :)

[froggyluv 2136]

 Indoors - something BI really, really needs to spend some tender Mcloving on. Such as the 'wrap around the building to enter from the back LOD' you mentioned, surely that can be addressed at core engine level. It seems any behavioural change is completely out of the question like it would destabalize what they have built upon which is a huge shame. Ive heard a rumor that Enfusion merge engine has or will have more of a free roaming AI, "off the tracks" if you will, in which AI can move without those building nodes in all painted areas. Shame they aint sharing that with us military minded guys :(

 

Hopefully in all future Arma iterations, they will at least add more buidling positions as well as better routines in deciding which ones to take

 

Anyways, I was able to send 2 fireteams down a road clearing buildings one after another on their respective sides of the road. It took me around 10 seconds to set up and was a very rewarding sight.

 

 

 That sounds very,very cool and much anticipated.

 

Edit: Question, does C2 adjust subSkills for AI? I generally run a script to downgrade all AI a full slot such as aimingAccuracy from 0.9 down to 0.09 etc.. But when running C2, as soon as I have an AI Join my squad it jumps to 0.9 no matter what else I do

[coolfact 10]

Is there a way to limit C2 to only a few people in a MP environment?

[Riksen 183]

Amazing mod indeed!

 

Thank you for sharing this awesome work. If I may, however, I would like to make a suggestion ... I think it would be great if u could implement compatibility with tactical view of arma. As it stands now, its impossible to give units orders using the tactical view cursor as the mod tries to send the troops where the cursor is pointing at. Adding such compatibility would certainly revolutionize the game tactical approach. 

 

Regards and once again thank u for this mod! Happy New Year mate

[kremator 1065]

^^ you meaning like a satellite view ... interesting idea there for mad_cheese.  I know that we have the data pad, but an overhead view WOULD be awesome too for planning (in fact MAY be even better - because buildings sometimes are not the correct shape on map!)

[Joubarbe 0]

Awesome mod, I have ArmA 3 since the release and I've only downloaded this mod today! It changes the game, so thanks.

 

By the way, do you recommend any other AI mod with C2 ? I've tried ASR AI, but men simply don't want to shoot ; and bCombat, and AI do shit IMO ^^

[kremator 1065]

You obviously aren't using ASI_AI or bCombat properly Joubarbe!  Both work brilliantly - so your setup must be wrong.

 

So mad_cheese, about that overhead planning tool (maybe even PiP ....  ;)

[Joubarbe 0]

Are you using both of them kremator ? Isn't there some conflicts ?

[mad_cheese 593]

[...] I think it would be great if u could implement compatibility with tactical view of arma. As it stands now, its impossible to give units orders using the tactical view cursor as the mod tries to send the troops where the cursor is pointing at. Adding such compatibility would certainly revolutionize the game tactical approach.

Regards and once again thank u for this mod! Happy New Year mate

^^ you meaning like a satellite view ... interesting idea there for mad_cheese. I know that we have the data pad, but an overhead view WOULD be awesome too for planning (in fact MAY be even better - because buildings sometimes are not the correct shape on map!)

Happy new year guys!

Riksen, I guess you are talking about the command-view in Arma 3 (NUMpad "."). I was not aware of this, thx! I can't seem to figure out how to fetch the screenPos of the cursor, it will always return the middle of the screen. I also ran into feedback trackers about the issue, not the best sign. How about this: It's not on the list of my priorities but if you tell me how to fetch that position, I'll make the adjusments for you.

 

Now, for the SAT-view thing: I have wanted it for a long time. I would restrict it so that you can only use it in conjunction with a drone, possibly with a way to toggle that restriction mission-side. Otherwise, in MP, it would present an unfair advantage over other users. Anyways, there's some real issues. The first one is minor, I can't use the tablet for it since I could not manage to get a screenpos from a PIP-control within an interface. That's cosmetic, I can work around that. BUT: visualizing the process is a MASSIVE task since i would need to use drawIcon3d  for that. I don't know how much impact these 'draw' eventhandlers have on FPS. They are amongst the few things that run in the background until the orders are complete. If I can just toggle their visibility without a problem, it could be okay. If I need to dynamically create and delete them... aiya.

 

Having said that: The update supports buildings in planning mode and you can preview the building's positions. The heights of the buildingPoses are visualized in 3 different increments (since very few buildings have +2 floors).

 

By the way, do you recommend any other AI mod with C2 ? I've tried ASR AI, but men simply don't want to shoot ; and bCombat, and AI do shit IMO ^^

I have not tried bCombat, but ASR has no impact that I would know of. It might tamper with your AI's sub skill, that should be it.

 

Is there a way to limit C2 to only a few people in a MP environment?

Very good point. I will not limit the groupsize, that would be up for the particular mission and whatever AI-shop-system it uses. However, there's sort of an exploit that I'll fix. I don't think I should lay out what that is though :D

[kremator 1065]

Now, for the SAT-view thing: I have wanted it for a long time. I would restrict it so that you can only use it in conjunction with a drone, possibly with a way to toggle that restriction mission-side. Otherwise, in MP, it would present an unfair advantage over other users. Anyways, there's some real issues. The first one is minor, I can't use the tablet for it since I could not manage to get a screenpos from a PIP-control within an interface. That's cosmetic, I can work around that. BUT: visualizing the process is a MASSIVE task since i would need to use drawIcon3d  for that. I don't know how much impact these 'draw' eventhandlers have on FPS. They are amongst the few things that run in the background until the orders are complete. If I can just toggle their visibility without a problem, it could be okay. If I need to dynamically create and delete them... aiya.

 

Well, we are in no rush mate, but it may be good to see just how this works!  Perhaps there won't be too much of an FPS hit, if at all (perhaps this is where heavyweight coder-gurus could step in?)  I also wouldn't worry too much about the MP environment.  The modern battlefield has so many 'eyes-in-the-sky' it would be a shame to leave this out for MP.  Talking of this, is C2 totally MP compatible on servers?  I can't seem to get it to fire when I'm on my dedi (which is a shame :( )

[mad_cheese 593]

Well, we are in no rush mate, but it may be good to see just how this works!  Perhaps there won't be too much of an FPS hit, if at all (perhaps this is where heavyweight coder-gurus could step in?)  I also wouldn't worry too much about the MP environment.  The modern battlefield has so many 'eyes-in-the-sky' it would be a shame to leave this out for MP.  Talking of this, is C2 totally MP compatible on servers?  I can't seem to get it to fire when I'm on my dedi (which is a shame :( )

I will give it a shot eventually!

 

As far as dedi's go - I used to have access to a dedi where I could test the addon. Now all I have is A3Server. It used to work 100% on dedicated servers but I can't promise that nothing has changed that. The ZEUS feature for example is only tested with A3Server set up on my machine, so it's kind of a dealbreaker. If you want, we can try it on yours and see where the problem is.

[Riksen 183]

Happy new year guys!

Riksen, I guess you are talking about the command-view in Arma 3 (NUMpad "."). I was not aware of this, thx! I can't seem to figure out how to fetch the screenPos of the cursor, it will always return the middle of the screen. I also ran into feedback trackers about the issue, not the best sign. How about this: It's not on the list of my priorities but if you tell me how to fetch that position, I'll make the adjusments for you.

 

 

Appreciated but I also have no clue how to get that lol ... Guess some investigation is due. I'll let u know as soon as I find some info about that

 

Regards

[froggyluv 2136]

 Thanks for conveniently ignoring my question!

 

 

  :P

 

 No matters, I peeked inside and saw it does indeed setSkill to 1 so Im guessing to better allow them to play out your schemes. The reason I ask is because I really like to lower all skills across the board all the while using C2 as well.

 

 In short. Im greedy.