Short-sighted soldiers: Bug or feature? (Long post.)

[st!gar 3]

Certain units appear to be half-blind.

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The more I play, I can't help shake the impression that some of the unit types has significantly shorter vision range than others, in ways that doesn't really make sense. :confused:

For example, I seem to find that most CDF and Chedaki infantry groups needs to be significantly closer to hostile units before detecting them than their USMC and Russian counterparts. (I haven't really checked out NAPA yet.) And just so it's said; this behavior can get extreme.

I recall a situation I cooked up in the Editor, where a BLUFOR squad was to descend on the airstrip in Utes, from the top of a nearby hill overlooking the installation. The airport housed an OPFOR group, scripted to a "Guard" waypoint, standing out in the middle of the strip. On my fist attempt, the BLUFOR group was a USMC Rifle Squad, and OPFOR consisted of a Russian Infantry Squad. The hill the USMC squad was descending from was large, and had a good view of the enemy-held airstrip, so the firing started almost immediately after they had started moving down the slope. Once the Russians had detected where the hostile fire was coming from, they reacted semi-efficiently, returning fire and seeking cover. On my next try, I swapped the USMC squad for a CDF squad, and the Russian squad for a Chedaki group.

That changed the whole dynamic.

As the CDF started their advance down the hillside, I expected them to detect and engage the Chedaki around the same time the USMC had done on the previous playthrough. They didn't. As they reached the spot where the USMC had spotted the enemy, they just kept on walking. And walking. And walking. And, to my horror, I watched the half-blind fuckers stumble on aaaaalll the way down the hill, kept on blindly walking the whole distance from the foot of the hill over to the actual airstrip, and then suddenly detect the presence of the Chedaki group within spitting distance of each other, and, confusedly, started spazzing out, sending some units flanking all over the place, opening fire at point-blank range and generally speaking doing just about everything a serious MilSim should at no point whatsoever have them do. :mad:

And when I say "point-blank", I mean that quite literally. As in, they could easily have hit the enemy with thrown rocks. It was insane.

As for the Chedaki, they were no better. Standing around in their own thoughts while a CDF squad was marching at them almost in plain sight, and becoming equally confused once the firing broke out.

I tired again, in several situations in differing terrain. The results were always the same - the CDF and Chedaki didn't detect one another until they were so close, a human being with regular eyesight would have detected them ages ago. Why is this? Is this a some kind of stats-thing, perhaps? You coding and modding pros here on the forum have no doubt cracked open the game files containing the information on the different unit types and their vision range(s) at this point. Does some units simply see shorter than others? Is this an attempt at some weird idea of "realism", to simulate that the CDF and Chedaki are less trained soldiers than Russian and American troops? Or is it simply a bug? What are your experiences on the matter?

Please respond with whatever you've got. I'm confused and frustrated.

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Additional information: In all cases, I used the default infantry groups from the "Groups" -section of the Editor menu. There was no editing of the classes and skill settings. The attacker(s) waypoint(s) were set to:

*TYPE: "Seek and destroy"

*COMBAT MODE: "Open fire, engage at will"

*FORMATION: "Line"

*SPEED: "Normal"

*BEHAVIOR: "Combat".

In all cases, it was clear daytime.

Edited November 5, 2009 by St!gar

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Bug, but one that is rather impossible to fix, or get right. Spotting abilities are based very much on cold numbers. Fix this, and we'll get "can't do stealth missions" complaints, or "they spot me from too far distance" complaints. No value will ever suit the extremes.

I haven't tested this, but try to have a scoped unit in the spotting group. Maybe also do a lookAt (or doTarget?) for that scoped unit to ensure he tries to see you. Or in intervals.

I'd rather try to manually reveal something, than try to make something stealthy, when either one doesn't work.

I find AI to be terribly blind myself at time, yet other times I'm furious about their sighting abilities when they should have none.

[mtuckner 10]

Civilians are the most extreme retarded. Give them guns and you have to be within feet.

[MQ-9 Reaper 10]

some of the unit types has significantly shorter vision range than others

I play mainly with USMC and Russian troops so I have not noticed this yet. But concerning this :

Short-sighted soldiers

I could be wrong but I think that 'Sensitivity' parameter (inside characters.pbo/config file) is the setting that allows the AI to identify visually targets as enemies or friendlies according to the distance.

I have been playing with 'sensitivity' set at 10 (instead of 1.5) for a while and, so far, I think it has given me good results and gameplay : AI soldiers identify immobile opfor at +300 meters (more for moving enemy soldiers), so the AI is much more aggressive and shoots like a human player would do I guess (ie : without asking too much questions)

Fix this, and we'll get "can't do stealth missions" complaints, or "they spot me from too far distance" complaints. No value will ever suit the extremes.

I agree with you, in the end, I think it is better if each player tweaks the AI (settings like Sensitivity and SensitivityEar) to suit his style of gameplay. Personally, I have no problem with the AI identifying me as enemy at long range, but I do have a problem when the AI is able to hear my footstep at 50 meters in their back (which was fixed in patch 1.03).

Edited November 5, 2009 by MQ-9 Reaper

[BeerHunter 0]

So you're saying that the "'Sensitivity' parameter" in the pbo file is a constant?

Wouldn't it be passed to an algorithm that would return a value adjusted for certain factors such as light , concealment etc. in which case it should certainly be easy enough to plug in a few extra parameters to make the end results more realistic.

Would imagine that as time goes by we'll probably see something like this in a future patch.

[fabrizio_t 58]

There is a documented issue about AI spotting problems.

See: http://dev-heaven.net/issues/show/2209

---------- Post added at 05:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:25 PM ----------

I could be wrong but I think that 'Sensitivity' parameter (inside characters.pbo/config file) is the setting that allows the AI to identify visually targets as enemies or friendlies according to the distance.

I have been playing with 'sensitivity' set at 10 (instead of 1.5) for a while and, so far, I think it has given me good results and gameplay : AI soldiers identify immobile opfor at +300 meters (more for moving enemy soldiers), so the AI is much more aggressive and shoots like a human player would do I guess (ie : without asking too much questions)

Beware, sensitivity at 10 will make enemy see you at +300 meters even if you are in the middle of a forest (At least that happened with v. 1.04).

Even 5 sometimes is a too high value.

[nkenny 1051]

Wouldn't the simple solution be to vary sensitivity not only by unit, but by ROE/Mode?

It makes sense that units set to CARELESS or SAFE are less concerned with spotting things, than basic.

Units set to AWARE (the basic patrol roe) should have the default one.

Units set to DANGER or STEALTH should have a slightly increased sensitivity. (illustrating their heightened state of being, and how they've sacrificed mobility for stretching their senses)

Combine this with a slightly tweaked ai_dispersion.rar values and we should be seeing some really entertaining firefights.

-k

[Ruckus 0]

I put together a test mission several months back and I thought at the time that spotting distance had a velocity component to it as well which would make sense as it is much easyer to pick something up that is in motion that one that might appear more static. It seemed that I was able to get much closer by just walking slow.

When I replayed the mission and ran instead of walked they seemed to see me much further away. I repeated a couple of times but I'm not sure if that is enough data points to gather a conclusion.

I'll put together another test and see what happens.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Changes according to ROE/Mode can be scripted today, although I think I've read somewhere that changing individual skill values and/or base AI skill based on difficulty, have too little effect to be useful. I haven't played enough with setSkill array myself yet to verify this.

I tried a nontweaked version of ai_dispersion mod, but the AI machinegunners managed to kill off half their own team before landing bullets near us. Not happy, so I removed it from the addon list.

For firefights, I would rather have increased handshake for them AND players, when bullets starts landing nearby. Both intensity and duration. Making it impossible to deliver accurate shots when you are suppressed, and making suppression a viable option for human player against AI. However, that needs improvements for them to try to stay in cover as well, probably much harder to do.

[fabrizio_t 58]

Changes according to ROE/Mode can be scripted today, although I think I've read somewhere that changing individual skill values and/or base AI skill based on difficulty, have too little effect to be useful. I haven't played enough with setSkill array myself yet to verify this.

I tried a nontweaked version of ai_dispersion mod, but the AI machinegunners managed to kill off half their own team before landing bullets near us. Not happy, so I removed it from the addon list.

For firefights, I would rather have increased handshake for them AND players, when bullets starts landing nearby. Both intensity and duration. Making it impossible to deliver accurate shots when you are suppressed, and making suppression a viable option for human player against AI. However, that needs improvements for them to try to stay in cover as well, probably much harder to do.

"setSkill array" is good for changing aimingShake.

Changing "spotTime" and "spotDistance" variables makes almost no difference.

[Alex72 1]

Where is TrueRangeAI? We need it! Worked fine in ArmA1 - loved it in fact. :) Made the game a real challenge and it felt more like fighting human players as the enemy spotted you as far as you spotted them yourself. Almost anyway - you had a slight advantage.