Ai thread

[lozz08 10]

No other game really comes close to arma 2's ai when it comes to long distance tactics, engagement, so on, so on...

What I would like to see is this:

AI processes spread over more CPU cores. currently all AI can only run off one cpu core.

If we had that I think the development of the AI could be held back a lot less.

[f2k sel 164]

Why oh why do the Civs jump out of a perfectly good fast moving car just to lie down in the middle of a battle field.

Worse than that the will jump in and out endlessly it looks pathetic to say the least.

Just make them when we chose careless mode they stay in the damn vehicle, oh and let setunitpos up have the same effect on them as on soldiers

Some of these thing are minor but would help us out tremendously, I can't believe how many hours some of us have spent trying to script ways around these sorts of things.

[postman84 10]

The AI squad members need to be better at staying with the group and not get lost as easily. When I am acting as squad leader, the AI will ask me "Where are you?" and I don't know how to respond.

And still yet, the AI needs to be better at driving rather than running over friendlies, civilians, team mates etc.

Friendly units working in the AO should be identified better. The AI will report "Unknown man" or "Unknown [vehicle] at [position]" and it will often be a friendly unit. They should specifically say "Friendlies at [position]". I have shot at friendlies many times, not being able to identify them.

The AI should use buildings more effectively. They should establish positions on roofs (if possible), fire from windows or other confined spaces, and they should be able to do room clearing. Also, if I am holed up in a building and firing on enemies supported by a tank, why doesn't the tank fire the main-gun and blow me up in the building?

The command structure should remain intact throughout the mission so that your AI controlled squad mates follow your commands without abruptly stopping and ignoring orders. In the Scenario mission where a 4 man squad has to assassinate Brezina and destroy the BRDM, Unit 2 (Zbyshek) assumed the role of group leader, even though the commander was not wounded.

Edited February 23, 2011 by postman84
thought of more suggestions

[Trux 10]

What's the best value to set enemy AI skill at?

I just started a new sp game of Cyphers excellent Valleys of the Takiban using Ace 2 and Zeus AI on veteran difficulty where I'm in command of a group of 10.

It's dawn and I load my troops into a Ural and make my way towards the target area. I round a bend and can just make out the headlights of a vehicle coming towards me so I pull over to the side of the road (my headlights were off) and before I can think about giving a command to disembark BAM! I take a round in the face.

The other vehicle turned out to be an enemy UAZ Dhskm which could apparently id me from about 800m in near darkness.

It destroyed my truck and decimated my squad which went from 10 to 4 in less than 10 seconds.

[maturin 12]

In my opinion, set their skill as high as it goes and turn their accuracy down to around 0.5.

I don't see why a heavy machine gun shouldn't be able to hit a truck at 800m. The only issue is the fundamental limitation of the AI, which is that units in a group are a hive mind. Whoever saw you did not merely make the UAZ aware of you, it transmitted your exact location, bearing and speed.

The default AI is already too numb in terms of identification and engagement ranges.

Trucks aren't stealthy.

[MissionCreep 12]

The AI squad members need to be better at staying with the group and not get lost as easily. When I am acting as squad leader, the AI will ask me "Where are you?" and I don't know how to respond.

To re-orient a lost squad member/s, hail them with the function key (For example "3: Where are you?", the sqaddie #3 icon will say "Away", so press F3). With the on-screen rangefinder, choose "Move to" using the action "]" key and choose an object or location to meet at. It could be a rock 3 m away or a tree 300m meters away. The lost squad member will proceed there and wait. You can either go there and meet him and wait at the spot, or intercept him on route and then choose Spacebar->Regroup to return him to your command.

Its just like real life, you'll find some squad members are too slow to keep up or hopeless at finding their way and are constantly getting lost. I usually don't feel too bad about leaving someone really bad behind if they are persistently holding the squad back.

Edited March 9, 2011 by MissionCreep

[NeMeSiS 11]

To re-orient a lost squad member/s, hail them with the function key (For example "3: Where are you?", the sqaddie #3 icon will say "Away", so press F3). With the on-screen rangefinder, choose "Move to" using the action "]" key and choose an object or location to meet at. It could be a rock 3 m away or a tree 300m meters away. The lost squad member will proceed there and wait. You can either go there and meet him and wait at the spot, or intercept him on route and then choose Spacebar->Regroup to return him to your command.

Actually you dont even need to give him a move command. 'Where are you' is just their way of letting you know that they are far away. It does not mean that they cannot find you. (It may however indicate that they got stuck somewhere.. :p )

[RKDmitriyev 0]

Is there still no convenient way to force to AI to regroup with you once they've begun the "bounding overwatch" process? I searched around and it sounds as though the only solution is to force them to use icky formations like column or delta.

[kireta21 13]

Bigger problem is AI can still "take a root" and ignore player-issued orders for a rest of mission. The funniest part is after using team switch and switching back to squad leader, AI often go back to place it got stuck earlier.

I'm just replaying "Harvest Red" campaign, and after 18 months of patching I still have Razor members getting stuck in random places or leaving into random direction. Makes me remember why I went back to OFP for the last year.

[-=Grunt=- 10]

Tried pressing 0 then 2 to fix it? It works most of the time.

[Inkompetent 0]

Is there still no convenient way to force to AI to regroup with you once they've begun the "bounding overwatch" process? I searched around and it sounds as though the only solution is to force them to use icky formations like column or delta.

Not really, as long as they remain in combat mode or stealth mode. Both those behaviours makes the AI prefer slow, bounding movement.

[THEBLITZ6794 10]

put 2 squads of opposing infantry in some woods and tell them to use danger movement on their waypoints. they will do a bounding overwatch and flank, albeit somewhat crudely. in missions where you have more than 4 guys in your team, using this system will allow your team to fight the war for you essentially and you just gotta lead them. im very impressed. id like to see this expanded upon. ie: give a squad in HC an order to sweep an area or something. and make the ai better OC

[teach 1]

They need to fix the freaking AI. AI is dumb as hell...The enemy AI isn't any better, they don't even take cover most of the time. They'll just go prone, even if there is hard cover 1 meters next to them. I've no military experience or anything but common sense dictates to move to hard cover if near by in case of incoming fire.....When will Bohemia learn that they need to fix the AI before releasing any more Addon content:confused:

My thoughts precisely!! The biggest issue with this series.

I would stop all development until the AI is tweaked to hell.

[martyc 10]

There needs to be a FORCE COMBAT MODE function, or more precisely, there needs to be a way of forcing the individual combat modes of soldiers. Sometimes during combat whilst leading AI you need to get them to revert to "Aware" mode, to manoeuvre quickly, or drive quickly on roads instead of the COMBAT MODE DANGER, off-road driving style. Or you have manoeurved out of contact but as the friend AI still has targets they cannot be moved from COMBAT MODE DANGER.

---------- Post added at 03:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:16 PM ----------

Also, I would like to see a CANCEL LOOK AT command. When commanding tanks in combat I find it useful to command the gunners to watch a particular area, say a defile or appraoch route, however, the only way I can get them to stop staring at the designated location is to select another position for them to watch or use the WATCH DIRECTION (N,S,E,W) / SCAN HORIZON command. Neither of these commands are suitable for armoured vehicles moving cross country or on roads.

[nkenny 1057]

MartyC

Tell your gunner to 'cancel target' and he'll revert to his natural looking habits. :)

-k

[maturin 12]

MartyC

Tell your gunner to 'cancel target' and he'll revert to his natural looking habits. :)

-k

You mean No Target in the 2 menu?

Certainly doesn't work in my experience. Tank gunners get badly stuck.

[masonkiller 11]

Much of the general theme in this thread is speed. The AI thinks slowly, even on really fast PC's. It's a coding issue not a hardware one methinks. In my humble opinion I think AI speed should be top priority.

No matter what mods I try (such as SLX) and how much experience I give them, I can still place an alert high-experience squad in Strelka and saunter through and take them all out 85 percent of the time. It just feels.... easy. And rather unrealistic. That would be highly improbable in the real world, even for an expert soldier with lightning fast reflexes.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have games like Rainbow Six: Raven Shield where you come around a corner and the enemy AI sees you, aims straight at your head, and fires all within a period of a third of a second.

If you peek around a corner and there is a bad guy standing right there facing you, there should be bullets flying at you in under a second. Real humans have very fast reaction times. Not as fast as R6, but fast nonetheless. I'd like to see that.

Speed shouldn't just be for the offensive either, soldiers should react quickly under fire, and this has been mentioned many, many times. I just hope that after some patch at some point, when I sneak up behind a squad of enemy AI, right as I start firing some drop to the ground and some sprint for cover, immediately returning fire. :)

Edited May 2, 2011 by masonkiller

[Morten87 10]

If there a way Bohemia could improve the AI when using AI's to carry/ using mortars, machinguns ect.? I mean it takes ages to make 2 AI's carry mortars and machinguns. first they have to dessemble it then you have to press the buttens for them to carry the packback, then you need them to stand close to assamble. what about making them carrying these items with out telling them all the time. Like if you send a mortar team somewere you just tell them to assamble the mortar and the those carrying the needed goods meet up and assamble the static weapon. and if you say regroup they desemble it and pick up the items automaticly?

[Militant1006 11]

Aswell as everything that ha sbeen mentioned in the last page, would be good to see AI's behaviour varying greatly on their gun, for example, someone with a machine gun would almost every single time go prone and start firing accurate bursts instead of standing and acting like an anti-aircraft gun, and seeing snipers take less shots, but being far, far more accurate than anyone else, making them more feared than anyone else, having Special Forces moving a lot in firefights while being able to manage heavy fire on the enemies, your standard rifleman would be able to move quicker than a machinegunner, but fire less often and take being in the assault team as a priority, a medic would always stay back and wait for casualties, Officer would stay back to command, grenadier would join the assault squad and move alot, pretty much like rifleman, and say a farmer turned insurgent holding their position more often during firefights, but still firing a lot, so not being as aggresive.

I'm aware the ASR skills mod does similar things to that, but not the same, I often see machinegunners being the closest out of a whole enemy squad to my squad, whereas the officer will be running straight at you, and the Grenadier just sits back and lobs grenades at you.

[hellfire257 3]

Fully agree, that AA gun like machinegunner is something I see far too often. More rounds go miles off target than on target when they do that.

[meade95 0]

The more I play the more disappointed I am with friendly AI - Their accuracy is awful (if there is any elevation difference at all between them and the enemy it becomes flat out terrible). Also, they don't seem to spot to well.....

And I routinely see less trained enemy AI (say set to skill level .5) out gun friendly AI (skill level set to 1.0) in engagements. Which doesn't make much sense.

[maturin 12]

There's no difference between friendly and enemy AI. You can make them exactly equal with two config tweaks. Skill level doesn't affect accuracy. Circumstances determine victory.

[katipo66 94]

I like the AI, although they are not perfect as we all know but i have often seen them do some brilliant things.

Ive done lots of testing in dessert by placing myself up in the tower and setting out a maze and experimenting with different way points etc.

What i would like to see most (there is a ticket) is for the AI to use cover better if thats at all possible and have fluid change of formation when required.

Currently i believe the AI are programmed to constantly push forward even in a heavy firefight, the most game breaking immersion for me is to see AI move out from cover and stand in the open taking aim only to be cut down and one minute later another takes his place and so on, so i would like to see two modes of AI, the run and gun version and a more cautious (maybe boring for most) version.

Personally i think the cautious version would be great for game play as there would always be a measure of doubt and therefore tension.

the game play would then become interesting as then the onus is on you to take that position (or not) in another way other than the usual turkey shoot.

In all honesty though i doubt whether there will be or if there can be much more improvement on them now, but lucky for us if there is then BIS will be the company to squeeze it out of them.

Failing all that i would like the option to globally control AI behavior for different situations, we can manage this now with triggers and setbehaviour etc (maybe theres a better way?) but it would be nice to change the combat behavior from the editor, for example if you give a group a guard waypoint with limited speed, stealth behavior, then thats the behavior they will use for the whole movement... where i only want them to use it when enemy detected or they are engaging.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Katipo66

[SteveJA 12]

I understand what your saying Katipo, i think the AI needs to learn that it needs to win the fire fight before maneuvering.

[meade95 0]

There's no difference between friendly and enemy AI. You can make them exactly equal with two config tweaks. Skill level doesn't affect accuracy. Circumstances determine victory.

I'm talking about both the skill level adjustment bar ALONG with the A2profile config tweak. I continually see BLUFOR AI set to 1.0 in Config....with enemy AI set to .5 (in both skill and accurcy)....and I see enemy win lots of these battles.

Friendly AI accuracy is awful - It should be tweaked up as should their reaction times to enemies within 100 yards -