AI Medevac with ACE question & Police response question

[pognivet 151]

With the new Laws of War DLC I'm kind of interested to make a mission that revolves around a small military action in a civil society, at least as civil as you can get with no women.

 

The basic jist of the mission is that a black ops team (Modern day 2017 not 2035) inserts into a relatively developed foreign city in order to capture or kill a terrorism suspect. They are doing this under secret compartmentalized orders and refuse to work with local authorities in case there's corruption and he's tipped off and stays underground for another decade (Like Osama I guess). During the mission the team will have to avoid or "neutralize" civilians and civil authority, who may try to delay them in their mission, in order to accomplish their main objective. This takes a few forms.

 

The first line of defense is the civilians themselves. If they see men dressed in all black with military rifles speaking a foreign language I want them to try and call the police after about 30 to 60 seconds. I'd ideally like to add a small probability that they won't call the police because they think the black ops team IS the police or some authority. I'd also like them to not be able to call the police if they are handcuffed with ACE handcuffs or unconscious.

 

The second line of defense is the police. I want them to drive around randomly, or sit or stand by their car using ambient animations, until there's a call. I'd like the two police cars (and their occupants) closest to the call to respond. I'd like this to take the form of driving first to within 25m of the civilian who made the call, then driving from there within 100m of where the civilian last saw an enemy. If an officer is shot at I'd like him to take about 15 seconds to "call" dispatch, after which the response will be increased four-fold (8 police cars) along with a helicopter being deployed to loiter overhead. If an officer is killed I'd like a SWAT-style crisis team to be deployed to the area and to increase the response to eight-fold of the original (16 police cars). If a player surrenders using ACE or is unconscious I'd like the AI police to path to the surrendered/unconscious person and handcuff them. If possible I'd like them to load that person into a squad car after about two or three minutes and take them to a pre-determined point on the map.

 

The third line of defense is the local national guard. I'd like them to be deployed if SWAT has not captured or killed all of the enemies and SWAT has been deployed for at least 15-30 minutes. These take the form of 1992 Los Angeles nobodies. A lot come in on 2 1/2 ton trucks with heavy military equipment in tow, but they're probably less experienced than even the police. Their basic role here is to establish a command center (Nothing crazy, just park a few trucks alongside a road and have the platoon lieutenant hang out there) and to then send squads/teams on patrols through the cities and countryside with flashlights to root out the enemy.

 

The fourth and final line of defense is the nation's premier special forces group (everyone has one nowadays) which has been deployed from the faraway capital. They should begin making "preparations" (the trigger to send them should fire) the moment the national guard is deployed, but they shouldn't "arrive" (the trigger should be delayed) for about fifteen minutes to half an hour or whatever arbitrary number I decide after looking at a map and the top speed of a certain helicopter type. Once they arrive they take the form of a small highly skilled team with sophisticated weapons and should react quickly to reported sightings from friendly forces.

 

In addition to the above I'd like some of the cool new ambulances from the Laws of War DLC to be on-call in case a civilian, officer, guardsman or captured suspect receives damage. This only has to take the form of the ambulance driving within 25m of the injured person, the paramedic crew disembarking and rendering initial aid, the victim being loaded into the ambulance and it driving to a pre-designated point on the map, similar in nature to the arrest I described above. I essentially need a beefed up version of the "Support" waypoint, but active for multiple sides. I can copy-paste this script for use by military medics in this mission and others as well.

 

Some of these things I know how to implement in a practical way, but most of them I don't. I was able to make a very basic, broken version on Malden (cops drive around, once player spotted by cop they get "GET OUT" waypoint near player position and then "Seek and Destroy" waypoint on top of player position), but it was too unstable, inefficient and inaccurate. I need larrow, KillZoneKid and Kylania in here to help me.

 

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

ArmA AI driving is broken, sorry ;)

 

I posted this vid some months back documenting one of the many problems

 

I like your ideas but it just isnt feasible until they start to care about developing AI again.

 

 

 

your best bet to test the capabilities of arma is to get in there with zeus and set some waypoints for vehicles and see how they do at navigating and pathfinding, especially in built up areas.

 

i have done some work scripting AI driving, unfortunately it only looks credible on long straight roads with no turns or U-turns required, and no trees.

 

 

[lawman_actual 24]

I don't think you've actually posed a question yet.

 

I can tell you that it is, more or less, feasible. In fact i'm currently developing a bastardised version of the Bin-Laden kill mission for the Zeus gaming community which has many of the features you're talking about.

I haven't bothered with applying medical to civilians, mostly because I'm not that familiar with scripting in the ACE medical world.

 

Quicksilver is correct, the driving can be a real pain in the backside, but if you're smart you could probably work out a way to script a soft reset if a vehicle gets REALLY stuck.

Aside from that it's just about running tests. So many tests.

 

When developing the mission you'll probably run through the route the vehicles take enough times to know where they can and can't navigate.