Choosing who you want to be

[RomanG 0]

I didn't see any post on "my" topic so I will start a new one ...

I will start my point by following statements:

(Current) OFP AI is good at:

o walking long distances to specified location

o driving vehicle(s) to specified location

o lying in a bush for an hour without complain

o spotting an enemy in AI's vicinity and reporting it

(Current) OFP AI is not good at:

making combat decisions

o making analysed report of what it "see" (such us "enemy is building a base in Petrovice")

o finding places (like "the best place to hide", "the place with best view", "finding flag")

o taking cover

o AI activity is limited to the activities from the "Command menu"

o AI doesn't always listen to commands for whatever reason including bugs in OFP

What I would like to see in OFP2 is ability to choose who you want to be from the AI squad you command/own. For example, I am a squad commander and I have sniper three miles away waiting for enemy to come. Sniper is ordered "to not fire". After an half hour the sniper reports that the enemy arrived. In that moment I want to "switch into the sniper's body" and and control the sniper in First Person View fashion. This way I would basicaly take just the fun part of the sniper's job - making decision when to shoot, whom to shot first, and the shooting. When the shooting is done I want to switch back to commander's body (or other AI soldier I own). During the time I am in "another body" the AI would take control of my "original body".

I actually would like this feature as an OFP1 upgrade - I am even willing to pay for it :-) - otherwise I will have to wait for this till 2005-2006).

I think this feature would make OFP perfect combination between First Person Shooters and Real Time Strategy games. I epecially would like to see it in multiplayer - I am missing it in the excelent OFP mod - Capture The Island (Mike Melvin - the MFCTI leader - actually told me that he will try to implement this in MFCTI 1.2).

It would be especially beneficial for boring parts of OFP - walking or driving to long distances (mind that OFP maps are HUGE ! ... and especially in multiplayer you have no option to speed up the time), or anoying parts of OFP where you can't explain to your AI soldiers what you want - and especially anoying parts of OFP when AI refuses to do what it is told. I especially remember the "Search And Destroy" mission when I was supposed to find and destroy Scud. I put my objectives even higher - I wanted to destroy all enemy. To do that I needed to take Scud & Shilkas first, then call my choppers and then my tanks to finish remaining armor and infantry. I spent an half hour positioning my anti armor guys around enemy to have clear shots at Shilkas. Then I ordered them to fire. It was crucial that all Shilkas were destroyed. But one of my AI was simply refusing to make a shot. You know that answer - Negative. ... I had to kill my AI, take his LAW and take the last Shilka ... Or another situation is that your tank driver listens to you perfectly for an half hour and almost always when an enemy is spotted he refuses to move to places where I order him to go.  Following "conversation" with my AI usually ends with my tank being dead within next ten seconds. In this situation I would like to be able to simply "switch into the driver's body", drive the tank where I want, then switch to the gunner's body and destroy the enemy. I don't want to be fighting with menu and numeric codes to explain my anyway not listening AI what to do.

This functionality would be great for having for example stationary snipers, or just getting to places. Snipers by definition are supposed to stay and wait for enemy to come, or move just very slowly into their position. I can't imagine a human game-player lying on a spot for twenty minutes to wait for the enemy (lot of the time game would be over and your game experience would be that you lied in the bush whole game - not exactly fun). With the "switch person" functionality you can do other things and then switch yourself into snipers's body after he reports enemy.

AI is good at boring tasks such as walk or drive to some place (since OFP maps are huge, especially walking 10 minutes through empty terrain is not much fun), or wait and observe. Having the switching functionality would greatly improve fun of the OFP game, AI would do the boring part, gamers would do the fun part ...

One crucial element of this feature would be that you would have to be able to switch into different body very quickly. I would like to switch to for example "soldier #2" by keyboard shortcut - for example by double pressing the F2 key.

For those saying that switching body is not real - yes, from individual point of view it is not real - sure. But from the battle point of view this WILL make the battle outcome more realistic because soldiers behaving as the current AI is - are not realistic either so taking them over by human player is more real for the battle. (if BIS surprise me and make AI as intelligent as human players are (well, some of them are not very intelligent, but fortunately most of those do not play OFP ;-) ) then I will humbly take my hat down and will personally attend the Nobel prices ceremony where BIS team will take major prices for finally making "the intelligent AI dream" come true :-) ). The "switching"  could be configurable/optional, so players who do not want it can turn it off, or it could be enabled only for multiplayer or mission replay.

[coporal_punishment 0]

I don't like the idea of switching from body to body it removes the FPS of the game and replaces it for something like a tactical game (rainbow 6ish).

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX 0]

I dont like the idea either. Changes the game from tactical command to one man army.

Also would mean that you had respawn to group permanently on.

[jaenak 0]

"What I would like to see in OFP2 is ability to choose who you want to be from the AI squad you command/own."

"AI refuses to do what it is told."

"Snipers by definition are supposed to stay and wait for enemy to come, or move just very slowly into their position."

"BIS surprise me and make AI as intelligent as human players are"

First, the AI isn't good at driving.  For an example, the american campaign mission "Guardian".  They keep running into each other in the cities and when they start and stop and destroying each others' vehicles in the process.

Second, if you could switch bodies, I think that would take most of the fun out of the game.  The AI isn't bad at all if the proper patches are installed.  It would deduct quite a bit from the charm and atmosphere of the game and eliminate most of the point to playing the game as well as eliminating the challenge to the game if a person could switch from person to person.

Third, by deffinition snipers are not supposed to sit and wait for the enemy to come.  They are supposed to accomplish the same thing with one bullet that regular infantry accomplishes with one thousand.  How they move, when, how fast and how often is irrelevant, but practically speaking they are supposed to be more incogneto than most soldiers cause otherwise, their target would take cover and the point of them being out in the field would vanish, plus one sniper takes one bullet to kill.  One company takes 100 bullets to kill (at minimum depending upon the accuracy).

Fourth, the AI not obeying orders is due to bugs in the game whether it be the main engine or the make-up of only the AI its self.  The AI not obeying can and should be fixed.  Otherwise the least BI and CM could do is create a court martial so that any soldier guilty of insubordination would be jailed for a time, but all in all, it'd be easier to just fix the bug.

And lastly, AI will never be as realistic as humans because thousands of people and billions have been invested to try and accomplish just that ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution.  Simple thing being that the human mind is too intangible a thing to be able to duplicate.  If BI Studios could do it, I think they'd win a nobel prize indeed!

One thing that bothers me about alot of suggestions (in general, not this one namely) is that people suggest some things which would take an outrageous amount of programming to impliment.  I ran accross one or two a couple hours ago but I don't remember where they were though.

And what's respawn to group?

[PainDealer 0]

no no no no NO! there's no point in switching from soldier to another. there are many games that do this and that's ok I like them but in OFP no way. for example in H&D you have the possibility to control four soldiers. one of them dies. np hell I have three more! that just would rip the fun off of OFP. if you die, you're dead. and that's how it should be in the future too.

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX 0]

respawn to group is a multiplayer setting where if you die you respawn as any AI that are still alive in your group. Its usually off (by not using any AI) in multiplayer.

[PainDealer 0]

respawn to group is a multiplayer setting where if you die you respawn as any AI that are still alive in your group. Its usually off (by not using any AI) in multiplayer.

yep but I don't see any point in it. I feel like a cat with nine lives while playing. there's no excitement if you know you can continue after getting killed.

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX 0]

neither do I, I was just telling him what it is.

[ag_smith 0]

Looks like somebody played Ghost Recon too much. IMHO such an option would totally kill the game's atmosphere, so my vote is NO.

Edit:Just a typo.