Zeus AI Combat Skills

[fabrizio_t 58]

I think it makes almost impossible to sneak in the near of the enemy units without being spotted.

That's exactly the problem i tried to highlight above :)

I'm having some better balance with sensitivity raised to around 5 as a base (about +25/30% compared to Zeus 1.3) and maximum "spotDistance" lowered to 1.

With these values stealth works to some extents (there are still some issues though, probably "camouflage" values need to be fine-tuned).

All that said, thx for your great work here, Protegimus.

Edited January 31, 2010 by fabrizio_T

[Mysteryman5150 10]

+1 on that fabrizio- I love everything else about this mod but I can't really plan a good attack as I am spotted to easily, and usually your team is the team in motion.

@Protegimus- Thank you for improving the gameplay immensely. I don't agree with the accuracy problems that some people speak of. If you ever watch Blackhawk down, I know it is a movie but it is a fairly good depiction of real war action, you will see soldiers run out of ammo and alot of gun fire from both sides, especially the enemy that doesn't hit anyone. Not every bullet has a name on it, unless you are a sniper, and it should be very difficult to aim accurately when being fired upon. IMO this is one of the realistic elements that your mod adds and was missing in the vanilla version. Thank you for an excellent mod and you work put in to it.

[esco7800 10]

hear is my line "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 33900 -mod=@Duala parameter;@zcommon;@sub_apmine;@RealMortars;@mod1;@mod2;@mod3;@mod4

but only the first mod Duala parameter is loading none of the other are can someone tell me what i'm doing worng?

[jasonnoguchi 11]

well, according to statistics, it takes an average of 1000 rounds per kill in RL wars...so...

[Mysteryman5150 10]

@Jason- That is what I was getting at, thank you for some statistical support on that;). I think it is so much more realistic when every bullet doesnn't have a name on it, unless of course it is a sniper firing. However, it doesn't sound like BIS has allowed for individual unit accuracy so I will stick with the Zeus platform:).

[Zeron 10]

hear is my line "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 33900 -mod=@Duala parameter;@zcommon;@sub_apmine;@RealMortars;@mod1;@mod2;@mod3;@mod4

but only the first mod Duala parameter is loading none of the other are can someone tell me what i'm doing worng?

i am not sure you can have spaces in the folder

[esco7800 10]

i am not sure you can have spaces in the folder

yea I changed that there are know spaces any more still not loading all the mods only the first one?

[Zeron 10]

so its now

-mod=@Dualaparameter;@zcommon;@sub_apmine;@RealMortars;@mod1;@mod2;@mod3;@mod4

[esco7800 10]

yea but still the other mods are not loading only the first one

[dialektiikka 10]

I think it is so much more realistic when every bullet doesnn't have a name on it, unless of course it is a sniper firing. However, it doesn't sound like BIS has allowed for individual unit accuracy so I will stick with the Zeus platform:).

Second that. I've been playing at Veteran levels with ACE2/Zeus/GL4 combo on for a few weeks now and it keeps me impressed every session. I've been gaming a looong time and for the first time I get the feeling the AI is hard to beat, but not because the AI cheats. When I lose half my men at the end phase of a mission, it's because I've lost focus and taken stupid risks :).

Chesty Puller scenarios, for instance, became these extended Recon/Fire & Movement type things. Check the surroundings, assign pointmen, then move short distanses from cover to cover, keep a couple of guys behind as mini reserve and really, really protect your key personel (medics, AT etc.). I get a big kick re-playing stuff I used to be able to breeze through in an half hour, that now take more than two hours. Tv-series episodes to full lenght movies :D. Just like it should be.

It's great that AI mods have developed so far, even though ArmAII is less than year old. Hopefully in the near future the limitations on individual unit AI can be overcome. That would bring the ArmAII AI to the level of detail seen in the Merlin Air Combat engine used in Shockwave's Battle of Brittain Wings of Victory flight sim. Individual AI for developed/third world infantry, tank AI similar to Steel Beasts... <Drifts off into a cordite hazed pipe dream> :D

[NoRailgunner 0]

jasonnoguchi - just curious who made those statistics for "an average" - any links?

X amount of bullets doesn't always have to equal Y amount of kills - war is just not that simple. ;)

[Rhiain 10]

Statistics are a pain....those are just numbers based on ammunition counts from units and record....it doesn't actually mean that 1000+ rounds were used to kill one enemy soldier. Though the statistics for Iraq and Afghanistan state 250,000rounds/1insurgent. It doesn't really factor in all the variables. Wind, distance, cover, accuracy of the personnel, accuracy of weapon( cleanliness of it, how well it's zeroed, how far it's zeroed for, type of sight system used, type of round, etc), shooting stance used, and use of support for the weapon. Pretty hard to figure out a count with all those variables.

[jasonnoguchi 11]

@NoRailgunner, watched it on TV. They simply divided the number of rounds expended during a certain part of WW2 by the number of soldiers shot dead. They were actually comparing it to the WW2 sniper accuracy of about 3 rounds per kill. Beats the hell out of me how true it is but I am sure most of the rounds are MG rounds.

[HyperU2 11]

I'm sure they look at the number of bullets shipped in theater and the number of dead. That of course includes the number used on the target range.

[Protegimus 0]

Hi Protegimus,

some days ago i found some problem on AI spotting performance while running Zeus (1.3).

Thanks for the feedback and putting the test mission together fabrizio. I'll check it out.

Hmm. Although I like a lot the game changes Zeus introduced into gameplay, I think it makes almost impossible to sneak in the near of the enemy units without being spotted. EVEN when you definitely cannot be seen. A good example for it is the mission on Khe Sanh carrier in the Seal Team Six campaign from Sick1. Even when you are starting a deck below, without moving and making any noise, the AI will detect you and react. So right now I think the AI is too sensitive. I agree that they should spot enemy units on a farther distance, but still, it should be possible to sneak to them.

I will try some missions without ZEUS, only with ACE2. Lets see what it brings.

I'm monitoring results with the ACE2 version as that mod continues to develop.

You have to be careful when testing in different scenarios as some of the objects in ArmA 2 don't appear to block AI vision as you might expect. An example is the concrete wall surrounding the airbase in the West of Chernarus, perhaps the aircraft carrier is another example.

If the AI are spotting you when there is no line of sight - be very careful if you're moving to the front of enemy, they need only a glimpse - and you're not attracting attention through noise or with vehicles then things need to be reassesed.

@Njayjay: Change the accuracy of the AI in your .ArmA2Profile file.

precisionFriendly=0.5;

precisionEnemy=0.2;

I wasn't ignoring your comment, examples are given in the readme and it has been discussed several times in this thread, so I expected that to be enough.

You could also look at the Realistic Ballistics mod's developed from NonWonderDog's excellent work for ArmA.

If that's not enough for you, you know the drills.

Protegimus

[domokun 515]

Hi I first starting using Zeus AI, a few months ago with CBA v0.2.

It seemed to work fine in SP as well as MP.

Life was good :p

Last week I updated CBA to v0.3.

Although I installed it to separate directory to CBA v0.2, it needed to install files to the "source" directory.

These files seemed more recent that the previous version so I agreed to overwrite them.

Last night my mates and I played online and immediately we encountered problems.

We all saw messages about "CBA main" or something other.

We continued playing as it didn't seem to interfere with our game.

Except that gradually we noticed the wounding system seemed completely out of whack, i.e. we would take damage but we never seemed to suffer any effects (injury or even death).

As I host the mission, we quit out of the mission and I edited the target line so that we reverted to CBA v0.2.

We started the same mission expecting everything to return to normal, but although we didn't receive the "CBA main" error message we still encountered problems with the wounding system.

Finally, I quit again and this time I re-installed CBA v0.2, thereby overwriting the existing files in "source" directory with the older ones.

This time we tried again and the wounding system seemed to work correctly.

So I guess my questions are:

1. Can I run the latest version of Zeus AI on CBA v0.2 without any loss of functionality?

2. If so, apart from loss of user-commanded AI, will other players experience loss of functionality if only I run this mod (players are reticent to installing mods), i.e. if Zeus AI only runs on server (and not clients) what is lost?

3. What benefit is there to running CBA v0.3 vs v0.2 with regard to Zeus AI?

4. Do you know why we encountered these problems to the wounding system when running Zeus AI & CBA?

5. Is there anyway to check that Zeus AI is running properly?

Many thanks for all your work.

It's really appreciated.

If you had any doubt, did you know that the CIA co-op server (very respected) only runs 1 mod and it's yours! :cool:

Cheers

[tobmic 10]

btw the base skill from enemy for example in DOMI do i need to use the Zeus ai settings for the base skill or default domi settings ?

[Protegimus 0]

Hi I first starting using Zeus AI, a few months ago with CBA v0.2.

It seemed to work fine in SP as well as MP.

Life was good :p

...

So I guess my questions are:

1. Can I run the latest version of Zeus AI on CBA v0.2 without any loss of functionality?

...

3. What benefit is there to running CBA v0.3 vs v0.2 with regard to Zeus AI?

Zeus AI does not use or require CBA, so you can update CBA as needed.

2. If so, apart from loss of user-commanded AI, will other players experience loss of functionality if only I run this mod (players are reticent to installing mods), i.e. if Zeus AI only runs on server (and not clients) what is lost?

Hopefully this explanation (now added to Troubleshooting/FAQ section in first post - thx Mr. Cheese) will help:

Q. What happens if the mod is only installed on the server, i.e. players

don't have it?

A. If AI is in a player's group then that AI is local to the player. If

the player doesn't have the addon and the server does his AI will be

less 'skilled' than the server's

4. Do you know why we encountered these problems to the wounding system when running Zeus AI & CBA?

I assume you're referring to the CBA version distributed with ACE. If so, that mod is under development, no doubt the ACE team are working hard to improve their good work.

5. Is there anyway to check that Zeus AI is running properly?

Simple test procedure in this post.

Many thanks for all your work.

It's really appreciated.

If you had any doubt, did you know that the CIA co-op server (very respected) only runs 1 mod and it's yours! :cool:

Cheers

Thanks, good to hear you are enjoying it!

[Mysteryman5150 10]

@Protegimus- How exactly do the H files work in the PBO's. I don't see an #include definition in the config.bin files. I was just wondering out of curiousity b/c I might try to make some slight tweaks for my own personal offline SP mode, if you don't mind me tinkering with it.

[galzohar 31]

While I love this addon, the most recent versions (combined with zeus server settings) seem to make the AI miss way more than they should, or at least miss way more than I miss. This becomes even worse when they actually have an ACOG/SVD/sniper rifle and still miss... You may want to tweak their accuracy up in some way.

Edit: On the Zeus test server I just had a KSVK sniper miss me twice at a range of 20 meters, so they definitely miss too much.

Edited February 19, 2010 by galzohar

[galzohar 31]

Some more inaccuracy issues: At 120m a USMC rifleman and an automatic rifleman would basically never hit, draining their entire ammo (automatic rifleman got killed while reloading his M249). Even though they were firing through a small opening (they weren't hitting their cover though, the rounds clearly were hitting around the target area) the enemy rifleman with an AK-107 managed to return fire with much higher efficiency (still took a while to miss, but is alright considering he had to hit through a small opening). Using a grenaider (with ACOG) instead hit the enemy rifleman on one of the first shots.

I've also seen them miss way too much with RPG29 and metis. In fact with the metis I was getting weird results - every time I was doing certain things they were missing and if I was doing other things they were missing, there seems to be some bugs there. For example when I put myself as one of the 4 metis guys (each in his own group) and aimed by metis at the tank (but not fire), the other metis soldiers would hit every single time, but when I didn't aim they would usually miss. If I placed myself as a soldier next to the tank the metis soldiers would pretty much always hit the ground halfway between them to the tank. As for the RPG29, it would almost always fly above the tank.

All tests done on the Utes airfield.

I really like this addon but those kinds of issues are pretty major and I really hope you get them fixed.

[rosentorf 12]

hm I feel stupid, but could someone let me in on the secret of how to edit skill and precision as stated in the first post. I go to the Options and edit the difficulty settings but there is only one value for enemy and friendly...where should I look for these settings?

Thanks for any help!!

---------- Post added at 08:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:20 PM ----------

Ahh I just got it...improved my search and found that I have to edit the profile-file in the documents-folders.

[domokun 515]

Really like your mod but I have a quick but fundamental question - when you write "Player and server profile skill levels significantly affect gameplay" which profiles should I be editing?

Let me explain, I run missions on my machine for my clan. I've also noticed that there are 2 ArmA2Profile files in My Documents\Arma2 directory. So do I need to edit both ArmA2Profiles? Also do my players need to edit their profiles too?

[metalcraze 290]

I have a following question regarding

To configure Zeus AI Combat Skills & Group Link 4 Special FX Edition to

work together, see this link.

The post at that link is as following

"set:

// GL4 Enemy A.I. Difficult:

// ================================================== ====

GL4_Global set [29, False];

"

However apparently Zeus was updated with new features so will the correct way of making GL4 and Zeus work together be like this?

// ==============================================================

// GL4 Enemy A.I. Difficult Level:

// ==============================================================

// True / False, default is True

GL4_Global set [45, False];

with the last string being uncommented.

the 29 option is related to whether AI can mount static defences and isn't under the "AI Difficult"

I'm using the 1.1.85 version of GL4

[mrcash2009 0]

Your question is more GL4 related to be honest :)

Anywho ... ignore the number "before" the comma this always changes because since that example was posted the configs in GL4 have been updated and that number is an ID list number (more have been added thus number has been raised). Although this is still exactly the same line to edit and yes, you should uncomment it so its false in order for Zeus to deal with AI side of things.

45 is the old quote in the first post which was 29 at that time ... just use the title for ref than that first number.

Edited March 18, 2010 by mrcash2009