AI discussion [Any Branch]

[cosmic10r 2331]

What map for the wall hack guys...
I tried takistan today and don't think I have That.
No mods beside aiatp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nyQ-zUZ4jE

[pd3 25]

i experienced the same. wasn't attributing it to the patch but since the buildings you speak of haven't been updated, it makes total sense.

I don't think it has anything to do with the actual buildings themselves, but how the AI behaves/interprets things and possibly how the bullets now interact with certain surfaces.

It definitely didn't happen in 1.50, and in previous versions in which it seemed more or less that legacy objects simply didn't adhere to the rules of penetration the way the A3 objects did.

[pd3 25]

What map for the wall hack guys...

I tried takistan today and don't think I have That.

No mods beside aiatp

 

No mods for me either, I know for a fact one of them was a 100% stock Armed Assault resource. (enterable house with three windows per side upstairs + terrace and patio umbrella) I was actually upstairs in that building and I was shot at from an exposure where: 

- None of the windows were opened

- I had never even exposed myself to the heading from where I was shot, the AI that started firing simply couldn't have even seen me

- The AI fire was unusually accurate

However I just actually had another wallhack kill with with an enterable building which might be a BI resource or it could have been an OPX addon building.

It's a multi-floored building, rather long, maybe like 30-40 meters wide, by half or 1/3 that in length.

Only the stairwell/roof is accessible, I was hiding in the stairwell and the AI just went crazy with the Zafir and shot the crap out of me. There was just no way for the AI (or a human for that matter, which should be the metric) could make a solid determination as to exactly where behind the obstruction the target could be.

It's unfortunate because I actually really enjoy playing A3 with those classic terrains, especially Avgani, the only one that comes close to it for CQB is Fallujah.

Additionally "combat"/"red" mode needs to be nerfed, and nerfed hard.

Pretty much all the worse aspects of the AI come from the perceived buffs to the AI's abilities that come when they're in that mode.

The ESP - like abilities, the snap split second movement with zero over steer and accuracy.

I just had the AI shoot at me laterally "through" a doorway even though they had never seen me and even though I was adjacent (yet not visible) to the doorway.

Even if they could potentially "hear me" they:

- Don't know whether I'm friend or foe, or at least shouldn't.

- Haven't actually seen me and shouldn't as a matter of doctrine be so overzealous to shoot at what they hear or "sense" that they don't even visually confirm it first, especially when it's through walls.

 

[bad benson 1733]

i have been spotted in Chernarus through a giant church. also on Kunduz, which uses OA stuff, a friend got shot and spotted right next to me right through a closed door.

[pd3 25]

So after doing some more testing, I've come to the conclusion that Arma 3 also suffers from the same issues that Arma 2 had with regard to how the AI "hears", and how that translates into what each AI knows about what's going on in their environment.

In the days when I played A2 a lot, I became quite annoyed with the fact that slightly outside the range that players can hear footfalls, the AI could seem to constantly predict where the player would come from if a detour behind cover and obstacles was taken at a certain distance.

I made certain to ensure that the AI I placed was near a range of structures or obstacles that would prevent the AI from visually seeing me, but also I meticulously tested the range at which other players/AI's footsteps would fade out of audible range.

I devised a test in which I would alert the AI from one vantage point, and then take a detour back behind and through obstacles that had been determined to be out of player-audible range.

Every single time without fail, the AI would be facing me no matter where I would emerge from.

That is, until I kicked their SensitivityEar value down a few notches, and then all of a sudden their magical "echolocation" powers suddenly vanished.

I decided after a few blatantly unfair deaths, and questionable close-calls on my Avgani CQB scenario to whip up a similar config mod that changed the sensitivityEar value for an AI character that I had also created.

I suddenly noticed that even at distances that would be WELL out of audible range for players hearing other AI, that the AI seemed less certain, and less able to predict where the player was. What's more, I no longer had problems with the AI magically popping up and shooting me after laying down on top of a structure as if they had X-ray vision. What's more, the AI does not seem to be constrained by sounds being dampened or entirely muted by moving behind obstacles which seems to have an impact on the player's total hearing range. All of those factors don't really add up to a fair fight against the AI.

Normally if it were a human player, you might have an idea of where somebody is if you hear them rustling around, but in the case of the AI, it is less like hearing and more like echolocation, as I mentioned, it was as if the AI was locked on to you before they even popped up to shoot, not exactly fair.

Now post-modification, there are far more chaotic moments in which the AI might have an idea that "I'm around", but don't exactly know where I am. A subsidiary benefit to this is that now when I get the drop on AI or they're surprised at close range, they don't usually whip their axis at lightning fast speed and shoot me before I can pull a shot off.

Basically, the AI's ability to hear things is in my personal opinion, OP as hell. I think the AI's ability to hear things at close to intermediate range needs to be nerfed, however maintaining the AI's ability to perceive things like gunfire and explosions at a distance, but that's just my 0.02.

[oukej 2911]

That is, until I kicked their SensitivityEar value down a few notches...

c'mon, don't be secretive, how much? ;)

[Greenfist 1863]

pd3, I can't reproduce that hearing thing at all.

In my tests, the AI clearly spots me much more easily if my sound is not occluded by a solid object.

 

For example: I'm behind a wall and the AI unit is facing away from me at 10m distance. I run back and forth in a small circle without him spotting me. I take two steps to the side exposing myself and start running again. He then immediately turns around and shoots me. So the sounds are indeed occluded. (OR AI has eyes on the back of their heads.)

 

Another test: AI is already very aware of me. I run behind a wall and he starts scanning for me. I do the circle again and he locates me only if I'm about 13m away or closer. This is only a couple of meters further compared to a situation where he hasn't already spotted me. So their hearing heightens only a tiny bit.

 

But I dunno, maybe with different AI skill settings it works more like you described.

 

These test were done in the current dev build.

[oukej 2911]

There's been one rather important fix deployed recently regarding the AI hearing - http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=23345

[Variable 322]

There's been one rather important fix deployed recently regarding the AI hearing - http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=23345

Excellent! This is a dramatic fix.

[pd3 25]

c'mon, don't be secretive, how much? ;)

Down as far as 0.0045 for educational purposes, which is pretty much as good as being deaf, it's even worse than being inside of a vehicle, that was more or less the bottom range of my testing.

But I find their "combat" echolocation abilities only start to drop off at around 0.2, and that's having the ability to pop up somewhere whilst AI occupying a building shoot at you, and then being able to move through side streets at a distance without them knowing exactly where you are and exactly where you'll pop up. 0.5 seems all too sensitive, time and again in the scenarios I run they can easily predict where one would re-appear from beyond a range that I could hear from, it's as good in many cases as them never having lost sight of you.

Also to Greenfist, a lot of these issues seem to be compounded when in a combat type scenario involving a multitude of units. I use ALIVE for the CQB module, I don't know if in that mode it explicitly modifies the AI, but many of the situations I've gotten myself into, it's extremely difficult to lose the lock of the AI without taking exaggerated measures to lose them. In previous times they've literally homed-in on me through a sea of buildings after trying to lose them after an initial encounter.

Secondly, I have no idea if legacy Arma objects behave the same way that A3 objects do. I do a lot of scenarios with Avgani and Fallujah, so whether that makes a difference or not I cannot say.

I'm suspicious as to whether, or more likely in my mind - how much of a increase the AI gets to certain abilities when they've entered combat/red mode. It also seems to be much worse if the AI is working in concert with other AI.

I've been spotted, and then retreated to a block of buildings with narrow, heavily obscured walkways in which the AI seem to have a great aptitude in worming their way around and inevitably finding my exact position whilst not actually being able to see me after the first encounter and then my subsequent disappearance.

This is without my sprinting, or fighting from said position so as to create a lot of noise.

I guess the only advice I could give is that I believe that footfalls coming from the same side should be just as relevant and competing for AI attention as would those of the players. It does seem as if footfalls seem to carry a signature that screams "this is not one of our guys", which gives the AI an unfair edge in an environment crowded by other AI.

[pd3 25]

There's been one rather important fix deployed recently regarding the AI hearing - http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=23345

I'll have to look into this, perhaps this was contributing to my issues in some of the missions I play, there are many a moment where you're quickly changing your viewing angle whilst not moving around, and if that happens to cause problems then no wonder the AI could easily figure out where I was. Never really thought of it as a possibility. Considering the distance at which the AI is triggered, I would suspect it's a very likely candidate.

I apologize for making another post, I thought as with the old forum, that it would simply append to my existing post.

[froggyluv 2136]

pd3 best bet is to just post a video as everything else is just so subjective and depending on tens if not hundreds of variables. Such as how do you know what routine Alive spawned Ai is using etc..? Also are these groups or single units? Triggers? If you could use something like Greenfists tool, it would better validate specific problems. For instance I ran a hearing test with one single AI in Urban today using Gf's tool and didn't notice any unrealistic 'spottings'. Only when running on the other side of metal fences did they hear pretty precisely but thats probably a desirable trait.

 

 The peripheral spotting is defintely a little too fast for my liking, not really the spotting, but the beaded placement that follows.

[pd3 25]

pd3 best bet is to just post a video as everything else is just so subjective and depending on tens if not hundreds of variables. Such as how do you know what routine Alive spawned Ai is using etc..? Also are these groups or single units? Triggers? If you could use something like Greenfists tool, it would better validate specific problems. For instance I ran a hearing test with one single AI in Urban today using Gf's tool and didn't notice any unrealistic 'spottings'. Only when running on the other side of metal fences did they hear pretty precisely but thats probably a desirable trait.

 

 The peripheral spotting is defintely a little too fast for my liking, not really the spotting, but the beaded placement that follows.

Well my system just doesn't have the juice to run a capture and remain playable, nor do I have a capture card/drive, although I probably should get one at some point.

However, I just so happened to encounter another situation in which the AI blatantly shot through a completely obscuring part of a legacy Arma structure.

I have a recreation for context, although I don't really expect anything to be done about it, you can choose to disbelieve me if you wish, but it literally just happened a few mins ago, this was the most blatant case of it happening yet.

Playing a scenario I shot at a CQB module-created AI entity on top of the building as-recreated here.

I was also receiving fire from elsewhere so I abandoned the building and moved to re-engage my target from another angle, undetected.

http://i.imgur.com/vkWYPHG.jpg

This picture illustrates the path I took, additionally, from the vantage point of the AI, you will note that it does not have a line of sight for anywhere except the mezzanine-thing from where I originally engaged the AI.

http://i.imgur.com/k9RJ4Mf.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/jkMex2o.jpg

The above-screenshot is a behind-perspective shot of where the AI was engaged, and where they were firing from.

The screenshot below from the perspective of the camera (not the AI) was where I was standing roughly when I was detected and shot at.

It was once again with a Zafir, and I could see green tracers traveling through the floor on the top portion of the building at an angle similar to the picture above.

http://i.imgur.com/DNUoBU5.jpg

There was literally no way they could have had a legitimate line of sight on their target, this is also a very new phenomenon, as of 1.52. Whereas I've been using ALIVE for quite some time now without incident, nor have ALIVE for some time either.

Just some food for thought, and for other A3 players out there to put it into perspective if they've experienced a similar incident.

[Psilocybe 3]

Awesome thread.  I recently retried the (groupthis) enableattack false; and again, was overwhelmed at how much better the AI performs, might be interesting to throw it in the mix?

[pd3 25]

Awesome thread.  I recently retried the (groupthis) enableattack false; and again, was overwhelmed at how much better the AI performs, might be interesting to throw it in the mix?

How do you define "good".

Good as in, "they're very skillful", or good as in "they're convincing as simulated humans"?

I'm presently rather annoyed by how much individual AI seem to "know" about the player as if somehow there is some commander with a drone feeding them moves and essentially metagaming as opposed to behaving like human beings.

It's like they can sense what the player is doing and do the exact thing at the exact moment that yields the best result when it simply shouldn't happen.

Especially at intermediate ranges, it's as if the AI just retains far too much info about what the player is doing, whether it's by hearing or some other means, I still blame "combat" or "red" mode, or whatever it's called. You literally have to play against them like they're deathmatch bots and I absolutely hate it. I don't want metagaming AI, I want AI the simulate the behavior and perceptions of people occluded by a combat environment.

[froggyluv 2136]

 Are you still playing on ported maps? Not trying to argue with ya but I can easily ditch AI from 200+ meters granted theres some cover around -which only makes sense.

[I give up 152]

AI in ARMA 3 is the best.

Sure, there are some issues, but not really related with AI, more related with colisions, terrain, buildings, etc.

Show me some other game where you can do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxKyXICc2M

[pd3 25]

Are you still playing on ported maps? Not trying to argue with ya but I can easily ditch AI from 200+ meters granted theres some cover around -which only makes sense.

Unless there are specific properties about A3 buildings that work to occlude sound that I'm not aware of, or some other influence that the AI are subject to, then it shouldn't matter.

It's not an issue of avoiding the AI, it's how they engage and maneuver at intermediate/close range.

I swear the AI can hear footfalls far too easily and if I cut the soundhearing variable down any further it will impair their ability to hear gunfire, otherwise I'd slash it to the point where they can no longer predict my movements from a reasonable range.

I've observed too many instances where the AI puts itself conveniently where it needs to be to mitigate an alternative approach by the player once the primary vector of approach has had it's viability exhausted, when there's just simply no way the AI should be able to clearly determine that due to what should amount to a lack of information on its part.

I've never seen it make an error in such cases, it always magically knows EXACTLY where to be so that it is never vulnerable but effectively situated. They're not like people, they're like sentient killer robots. Your approach has to be "over engineered" by a factor far greater than it would be if you were even playing against another human because that's how dead on the money they are. The effect seems to be diminished as you get out to 70 to 100 plus meters, at which point I've seen many AI blunder about not realizing they're about to get mowed down.

There is no such thing as "getting the drop" on the ai at close to intermediate ranges in most cases unless they're in an obviously compromised situation such as prone and turned away from you. I blame "combat" or "red" mode or whatever it is. Once they've become alerted, they seem to become hypersensitive and seem to have a very convenient sense of what the player might do without having any reasonable justification for it.

The AI does strange things as if it has precognition of when a player's tactical advantage has expired in a given place and automatically predicts the next location (among many) that they player could strike from again, effectively mitigating it's effectiveness. What's worse, is I've actually observed a few times now the AI reverse it's maneuver when I've quietly tried to fake them out, and returned back to the position I originally fought from. It's like they're taunting the player, as if they're privy to knowledge that you aren't.

Maybe this is a feature of ported maps, but I would like to know what makes standard A3 architecture so unique.

The weird thing is, they magically end up in the most strategically advantageous positions, and still "play dumb", it just so happens they can turn and aim very quickly so unless you're going to lob grenades around corners constantly, you're still in for a tough time.

That is to say, they don't always seem aware of why they're where they are. They won't always be looking in the direction of the approach the player will take, they simply manage to be exactly where they need to be to magically establish a superior position from another point of attack. It doesn't matter if you dip out of a range that the player might be able to hear the AI from, it's very bizarre, and quite honestly annoying.

[froggyluv 2136]

 So your talking about how the AI places itself on the map relative to player? Hmmm. That would be the sign of insanely good AI and would be giving BI way too much credit :P

 

 Maybe what your meaning is the lightening like reflex of the AI to turn/shoot in eye blink speed when you are on their periphery? Or just how they sometimes keep the bead on you when your on the other side of a wall -though this has been proven to be just an educated guess that is flawed. I know you said you cant right now, but seriously some sort of video would seriously help to break down exact situations as just explaining it just lends itself to too much speculation and misunderstanding.

 

 Personally now that Im addicted to Greenfists tool (of the year!), Im more impressed with the AI then I was before because I can see exactly what they do and dont perceive and some of the nutty shit they decide to do. Whats really lacking imo, are the proper animations to better show fear, surprise, focus, aggression etc as we'd actually have some visual feedback to how their 0's and 1's are thinking -kinda hard to notice they have suppression shake when they still headshotting you...

 

 Also, recently been using Eggbeasts AI sub skills presets and its like night and day from just using the AI slider bar - you can actually create strategy game level results when pitting a green conscript level squad vs. spec ops -suggest a try.

[joostsidy 685]

pd3: you really should create a replicable scenario for others to confirm. Personally I don't recognize the behaviours you're describing. Since you use mods it (potentially) changes everything. I play vanilla exclusively SP with/against AI.

[cosmic10r 2331]

I tried the eggbeast sub skill frogs and applied it to sides...

And let's say wow... is that a stark contrast...

I would love to see an ai sub skill for hearing that we could define similar to spot distance etc...

[froggyluv 2136]

 ^^Yup, much more distinction of skill level -much more then I new the game was capable of. Even better, you can apply these stacks of subsets at any time - meaning I may let the recon team enjoy there skill advantage over an untrained village but should an enemy tank, sniper, artillery or anything else appear -you can lower these on the spot and watch it play out in real time. Game changer for me.

[cosmic10r 2331]

^^Yup, much more distinction of skill level -much more then I new the game was capable of. Even better, you can apply these stacks of subsets at any time - meaning I may let the recon team enjoy there skill advantage over an untrained village but should an enemy tank, sniper, artillery or anything else appear -you can lower these on the spot and watch it play out in real time. Game changer for me.

Well i ran I it thru my standard test mission and the Blufor creamed opfor. As in 16 Blufor against 24 insurgents and Blufor suffered no losses.

Which is what I was going for... it was nice to see each side have a noticeably different skill level and Blufor spec ops actually look spec ops

[KeyCat 131]

Also, recently been using Eggbeasts AI sub skills presets and its like night and day from just using the AI slider bar - you can actually create strategy game level results when pitting a green conscript level squad vs. spec ops -suggest a try.

 

Seems to have missed that one, any links?

 

/KC

[cosmic10r 2331]

Seems to have missed that one, any links?

 

/KC

 

 

https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/141319-ai-skill-settings/?p=2295905