Ai thread

[Second 0]

Sounds like ArmA has it's 'open fire - engage at will' corrected to be again OFP-like. In OFP this was the case: At dark night AI could actually hide from something like tent if having 'open fire - engage at will' and refuse to move as long as it was unsure what was the object it saw. yes i've withnessed this: they remained WHOLE night in forest and didnt' come out to open because ONE MEDICAL TENT (yup. I blew it up eventually with handgrenades). Yeah, sometimes it worked like miracle for combat's atmospehere and sometimes with something like that medical tent or hostile object it didnt' work at all. Enemy tank seen at forexample 2-4 kilometers could cause whole front to freeze and seek cover, and they would remain there as long as any enemy were seen. Overall i think this is still one of those unbeatable aspects of OFP's AI. No other game offers this kind selfpreservance for AI... and besides AI could be two extremes: regular aggressive active self or passive selfpreservant self. However this strong point in OFP's AI was never really used in missions by my experience.

In ArmA with versions i've played (1.09 beta and earlier) it didn't work this way. Combat behaviour FSM most likely mixed with this 'take cover' feature from OFP if combatmode was set to 'open fire - engage at will' : AI had 'move'-order and 'hide'-order issued every second. Resulting strange atempt to get moving and hide during each passing second. Well it took quite a moment for BIS to fix this thing if it's true what Charonos has seen and it has been in vanilla ArmA, where some addons or mods are not doing their things.

I had to resolve this in suppression scripts by issuing 'dostop this' to AI before telling them to go hiding... Combat behaviour FSM didnt' seem to interupt with this (most likely because of dostop). Result -> AI actually was able to hide as FSM wasn't forcing it to get moving.

Ps. I've played ArmA just long time ago (version 1.09) so i don't really know what changes has been made. I just comment on basis which i understanding to be the case. I'm not necessarily right.

So basic formula in this case is: enemy seen -> hide order issued. Enemy not seen in couple of minutes -> hide order canceled.

And basic cure is: Dont give AI 'open fire - engage at will', in other words combatmode "red", if wishing to keep grunts movings.

[mr.g-c 6]

would be great if the AI would take car of each other like here in FarCry2:

http://www.4players.de/4player....en.html

[Stelios 1]

My suggestions :

1. AI driving tweaked up significantly. Vehicle colums wouldn't drive in a normal orderly fashion in Arma, which was really annoying. No convoy ambush missions, no insertions by vehicle convoy, no extractions by convoy. It really limited possibilities in Arma.

2. Units being able to keep formation. In Arma everybody ran up when there was contact. Units have to be tweaked to be a little less agressive and gung ho. First find cover and sustain a solid base of fire, then go get some.

3. Unit movement in streets and buildings has to make a next stop. If you assaulted a compound or hotel to rescue a hostage, 90% of the times the hostage didn't follow you out of the building. And offcourse, urban combat would be much better if units actually knew how to move in a town.

4. Viewranges for AI need to be more realistic. Many AI mods fixed this, but I think this should be standard issue.

[Alex72 1]

Not only that the AI should behave better in combat situations but something i really miss is more random things the AI could do. If more animations are implemented in ArmA2 as stated then there should be possibilities to make groups of AI do other type of things except stand in formation, patrol etc. What i mean is to see guards walking around, stretching their legs, doing more human moves here and there. And for example having a group of enemy AI load boxes onto a truck and things like that. More alive AI.

To sneak up on an enemy camp and see patrols, single guards and "workers" doing things here and there would add a lot of immersion imo. And hopefully this might be possible with the new animations that goes into ArmA2.

Regards

Alex

[dentist guba 0]

My suggestions :

1. AI driving tweaked up significantly. Vehicle colums wouldn't drive in a normal orderly fashion in Arma, which was really annoying. No convoy ambush missions, no insertions by vehicle convoy, no extractions by convoy. It really limited possibilities in Arma.

2. Units being able to keep formation. In Arma everybody ran up when there was contact. Units have to be tweaked to be a little less agressive and gung ho. First find cover and sustain a solid base of fire, then go get some.

3. Unit movement in streets and buildings has to make a next stop. If you assaulted a compound or hotel to rescue a hostage, 90% of the times the hostage didn't follow you out of the building. And offcourse, urban combat would be much better if units actually knew how to move in a town.

4. Viewranges for AI need to be more realistic. Many AI mods fixed this, but I think this should be standard issue.

about the town movement, OFP seemed to have positions identified in buildings (comes up in tactical view) but AI didn't seem to want to move to them, hopefully they will now be able to move through places better now.

[baddo 0]

My suggestions :

1. AI driving tweaked up significantly. Vehicle colums wouldn't drive in a normal orderly fashion in Arma, which was really annoying. No convoy ambush missions, no insertions by vehicle convoy, no extractions by convoy. It really limited possibilities in Arma.

2. Units being able to keep formation. In Arma everybody ran up when there was contact. Units have to be tweaked to be a little less agressive and gung ho. First find cover and sustain a solid base of fire, then go get some.

3. Unit movement in streets and buildings has to make a next stop. If you assaulted a compound or hotel to rescue a hostage, 90% of the times the hostage didn't follow you out of the building. And offcourse, urban combat would be much better if units actually knew how to move in a town.

4. Viewranges for AI need to be more realistic. Many AI mods fixed this, but I think this should be standard issue.

about the town movement, OFP seemed to have positions identified in buildings (comes up in tactical view) but AI didn't seem to want to move to them, hopefully they will now be able to move through places better now.

But I'm sure that sometimes when I ran into a building for cover, an enemy AI soldier or soldiers came after me into the building.

When that happened for the first time, I almost crapped my pants because I thought I was safe in the building.

[dentist guba 0]

the AI do go into buildings but i mean that they won't get in position at a window or door and fire out.

[baddo 0]

Yeah I see what you mean.

It is quite easy to script it, though. I did it and had quite a lot of fun watching AI's storm a building (and the walls and the "basement").

Of course it would be better if it wouldn't have to be scripted into a mission.

[ElMono 0]

Correct me if im worng, but i want to see that the ia leader dont use the machine gunners to engage enemy. They have a support role and must stay near the team or group leader. The machine gunner must support by fire to other soldiers that are engaging the enemy. It have no sense to send the MG to attack an enemy, so when the ia commands de MG to attack just shoot from prone position and dont stand up and go and hunt the target. If it is out of range, just ignore the order.

Thx.

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

I'll say it here as I think it needs emphasising:

Sub-teams of your group, when assigned, say, team red...

Should be able to adopt a formation of their own, not part of the original whole-group formation.

This has annoyed me from day one of getting ArmA, when I experimeted with 100-man groups...

[thepiespy 2]

hopefully ArmA-2 will actually have AI retreat when their group gets down to about 1/3rd strength, or even better, join up with other squads. Im sick of getting pegged by the last remaining member of a squad who decided to just go prone in the middle of a fallen tree and never move. Mission makes should be able to set a retreat zone or direction for each group, would make for cool assaults as AI falls back to different phase lines of defense.

Id also like to see armor crewmen hightail it out of there when they bail, i don't see any crewman in their right mind that would run into combat with nothing more than a compact assault rifle and 4 magazines of ammunition.

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

@piespy, that 'fall back and regroup' thing can already be done by mission makers with some basic scripting, only becomes complicated if you're spawning dynamic/random groups.

You could use a polling script counting remaining members, or an even simpler approach is to just use a small script polling every few seconds a trigger list that causes all enemy to retreat to a marker position when enemy numbers fall below a certain count.

The only problems I encountered using this system were when an enemy AI hid under some concrete steps in Ortego or in a building in Corazol - they were glitching inside of solid structures and didn't seem to be able to get back out.

Occasionally the AI would also get stuck in silly places, this will probably be addressed by the new finer-micro-AI...

[alpha125rbf 0]

AI changes in ArmA^2 - what would improve the game in my opinion:

I

- Defense positions (as a waypoint): AI team hits the ground and watches all sectors. (Example 3 man: TL watches 12 o'clock rifleman watches 10 and 2 o'clock and so on...) If contact has been spotted - no one stands up and runs into it.  Al rifleman are lying and engaging from where they are. It increases performance and makes the defense look realistic.

In defence the AI should shoot with the speed and marksmanship on the human level.

II

- It would be cool if there would be an option to increase and decrease the space between the units in the squad. Also a big improvement would be to have different spaces between the  middle squad and his left and right flanks. (But this is more difficult to make)

                                 (TL) (RM) (GP) (RM)

(MG) (SNIPER)                                                     (AT) (ACOG)

III

- The reaction to enemy fire must be changed. If player engages a AI squad, the AI runs around like ants. The reaction should be:

1. hit the ground and find cover. 2. wait and hold position till the enemy is spotted. (wait one minute at least! Only lying / crouching and watch sectors for AI. (If fire is intensive and there are wounded or dead - smoke screen! 3. engage or disengage enemy contact - together! If there are to many enemy contacts: hold the ground and let them attack.

IV

- Grenadiers should use their rifle at bigger distance instead of firing not accurate grenades.

V

- Important reaction to tanks or aircraft - AI should stay down. Hide and increase the distance in the squad (crouching). To make the game realistic there must be a way to fire AT missiles lying on the ground. Tankers would have far more problems attacking infantry. If armor or air kills or wounds a lot of people in the squad - the most survivors should hide and wait. Some AI can try to run away - but the rest must hide.

AI should see aircraft, tanks or enemy squads from at least 500 meters.

VI

- AI behavior should depend on the weapon he is holding. Rifleman can run, stand up and lie down fast - but a machine-gunner has to place his MG and engage from where he is - less movement and more fire support. The same thing for AT, marksman and sniper.

VII

- For some units and in some places it would be great to make a small trench - with some grass camouflage and 10 - 15cm high earth wall in front of the rifleman. (zero depth in the ground.) It has not to give to much cover - but it would increase the atmosphere and give a sort of static position.

VIII

- FDF has realized a cool way to carry heavy weapons on the back of the rifleman and mount them. Mortars, AT and auto- grenade launchers could be deployed by the AI at the battle zone.

IX

- The AI should fight as a team!

Example: 50 contacts ahead. 2 AI soldiers standing AAAAND: "2 engage that man!" 2 runs into a full armored company, and is gonna kill tha man! At least the command "2 engage enemys AHEAD!" and 2 engeges all threats and enemy contacts he has spotted, would be very useful! ; more useful a "supressed" reaction with 2 man against so much enemys if spotted: "Disangage, stay low and escape!". The same when attack aircraft is spotted and there is no AA cover.

A team fights, a team engages - not a singe rifleman. Section red - attack that ENEMY SECTION!! Section blue - support and cover section red - and so on.

X Editor

- The right click in the editor could show a quick options of the waypoint or a unit. It would work faster than the window, with less options.

[SaBrE_UK 0]

Very good suggestions, at least it theory.

[Boborish 1]

One thing just came up to my mind... is there a chance youre going to make more idle animations? It would make AIs look a little more human - things like putting the weapon on their shoulder when idle, sit down, crouch or drinking even (if he has the field bottle), crouching after a while of running/sprinting when he stops (assuming hes not in combat), wipe his face from the sweat etc. Would be really nice, though a bit complicated but if there are people for this kind of things in your team and dont have anything to do, would be great.

EDIT: Oh and what about animated breathing? Imagine this - you and your squad had to run for a while and everyones tired now. Some of them crouch, moving their breast up and down, open mouth and making noise as they try to take a breath. (its too silent in ArmA) Would for sure look cool (but there would need to be more variations (sound (defined by radio voice), animations) and different endurance for each soldier to make it look human-like.

Its not very important of course, take this as an idea for inspiration.

[mr_centipede 31]

One thing just came up to my mind... is there a chance youre going to make more idle animations? It would make AIs look a little more human - things like putting the weapon on their shoulder when idle, sit down, crouch or drinking even (if he has the field bottle), crouching after a while of running/sprinting when he stops (assuming hes not in combat), wipe his face from the sweat etc. Would be really nice, though a bit complicated but if there are people for this kind of things in your team and dont have anything to do, would be great.

EDIT: Oh and what about animated breathing? Imagine this - you and your squad had to run for a while and everyones tired now. Some of them crouch, moving their breast up and down, open mouth and making noise as they try to take a breath. (its too silent in ArmA) Would for sure look cool (but there would need to be more variations (sound (defined by radio voice), animations) and different endurance for each soldier to make it look human-like.

Its not very important of course, take this as an idea for inspiration.

Cool idea... The breathing part, i remember OGR had this... (Original Ghost Recon, not GR Aracde Warfighter...) They even had the vapour when you exhale in winter maps. Cool effects. Really adds to the immersion.

As for idle anim, its already there in ARMA 1, just that the anims are too simple, so maybe there's hope BIS will put it in if there are more spare time. Because honestly, I would like the micro AI to be real polished up upon released.

After that, maybe we can have extra idle anim in a patch or something...

[Boborish 1]

One more thing - AIs head movement needs to be redone. They always move their heads at the same speed, they always look at certain direction for the same amount of time. I guess it wouldnt be that hard to fix, would it?

[LJF 0]

I just want AI that is able to fend for itself, both on a unit level and on a command level:

*Units duck around corners QUICKLY when shot at,

*Commanders actually send squads to take positions by themselves, pull back to defend if out-gunned (massed tank assault/air assault), also being able to order an entire squad to garrison in a building.

*Units work as a cohesive team/squad/platoon/company etc.

The AI is good ... ish, but it doesn't "feel" good, if feels like a bunch of retarded robots. I want "human" AI.

[ElMono 0]

I think this point is a must for AI improvement:

VI

- AI behavior should depend on the weapon he is holding. Rifleman can run, stand up and lie down fast - but a machine-gunner has to place his MG and engage from where he is - less movement and more fire support. The same thing for AT, marksman and sniper.

Specially for MGs.

Cya.

[Lou Montana 101]

One more thing - AIs head movement needs to be redone. They always move their heads at the same speed, they always look at certain direction for the same amount of time. I guess it wouldnt be that hard to fix, would it?

I add that for more "human" face animation, eyes should be able to turn, so instead of turning the head full direction to what they watch, they just half turn their head and the rest is done with eyes.

BUT, it would need eyeballs in 3D model, plus some textures and some redesign... not a huge work but quite something. And not mandatory... but I'd love to see that, for sure !

[Praelium 0]

I've been making my own missions where I set up my squad on the side of a road and have them surprise attack an enemy convoy. However, I have three problems:

1. The guys with rocketlaunchers don't seem to want to fire over a distance, and riflemen/machinegunners fire very slowly (problems with TruerangeAI?).

2. The rockets always miss the vehicle. Even though I'll tell them to target the BRDM, sometimes it looks as though they're aiming for a UAZ.

3. It's very hard getting the AI into a position where they can clearly view the road when prone. Sometimes the terrain get's in the way and it's very difficult to set a large up a large group.

While I'd imagine it would be very difficult to fix the 3rd problem, (except with teamswitching, which I don't really want to be necessary), the other two should be simple enough. Also, I'm calling out on BIS to increase the engage distance for different units. TruerangeAI has really made the game much more enjoyable for me.

[Alex72 1]

I couldnt read through all the latest posts (sorry) and it might be adressed already but in ArmA2 i hope the AI will have longer eye sight then vanilla ArmA. More at TrueRangeAI style. I dont want the AI to react to you without looking your direction, but if you walk on a field maybe 500 meters away and you can clearly see the AI, snipers/bino carrying AI should use binos/scopes and look at your direction and then react. Would be great if there was a slider for this in options maybe along with difficulty slider. Longer eye sight will give a feeling closer to playing vs real players and i think thats important for fun play.

Regards

Alex

[Praelium 0]

I've been making my own missions where I set up my squad on the side of a road and have them surprise attack an enemy convoy. However, I have three problems:

1. The guys with rocketlaunchers don't seem to want to fire over a distance, and riflemen/machinegunners fire very slowly (problems with TruerangeAI?).

2. The rockets always miss the vehicle. Even though I'll tell them to target the BRDM, sometimes it looks as though they're aiming for a UAZ.

3. It's very hard getting the AI into a position where they can clearly view the road when prone. Sometimes the terrain get's in the way and it's very difficult to set a large up a large group.

While I'd imagine it would be very difficult to fix the 3rd problem, (except with teamswitching, which I don't really want to be necessary), the other two should be simple enough. Also, I'm calling out on BIS to increase the engage distance for different units. TruerangeAI has really made the game much more enjoyable for me.

I thought of a way to fix #3. When you take control of units and select them, if you hold ALT you can tell them to face a certain direction. Maybe it should be added that instead of just facing the direction, they should also be able to see the area when prone.

There would need to be some tollerance for units on buildings, (where there isn't much room to move), or if it's just impossible to see the spot without moving too far.

PS. Yes, I quoted myself.

[wipman 1]

Hi, there're some ways of shot down aircrafts (even planes) with

a single squad, taking a certain semicircular formation and shooting

in front of the path of the incomming chopper or plane, so it'll get

some lead that may hit, damage or at least scare enough the aircraft

as for make it flee, take it down or in our case (a game) make it

land (in the case of a chopper) far away from where it was going

to land in a begining; this way of fight enemy aircrafts works as the

Palanx AA system works, creating a wall of lead that the aircraft will

crash with. This is a very common way of make it harder for the

enemy to deploy troops by chopper in the field and where the

riflemen also shoots, not just the machine gunners. I'll like to see

the AI's taking this formations in semicircle or L form (depending

on the terrain, weapons in the squad and aircraft flyght path)

when they engage enemy choppers or slow speed planes. Thing

this, that the AI don't do right now. Let's C ya

[sluggCDN 0]

Two simple suggestions from me:

1). Somehow AI in Urban environment should stay away from going prone in the middle of a street right in the open. In one of the latest clip BIS showed deployment of russian specops unit in a city. There was a machinegunner that just walked in the middle of the street and went prone right in the center lane. There should be a condition set for AI rule of engagement when in Combat or Aware mode - they should move along protected area away from the centre of a street. Street sidewalks, along building walls? It goes back to the issue of more human behavior - right now they move around like telepathicly controlled zombies with little regard to whats going on around. They don't move from cover to cover - straight on, from waypoint to waypoint.

2). AI shouldn't be able to rotate/spin around on the belly in prone position. It's humanly impossible. The same goes for upright stance - they rotate along their vertical axis like a tank, on a spot. Different animation should be applied here - side-step to change orientation or similar.