When should AI subordinates use the "bounding overwatch" movement

[suma 8]

In ArmA 2, when player is the group leader, AI subordinates always use cover and move using the "bounding overwatch" scheme once in combat. The combat mode is activated whenever player gives order "Danger", and also when player goes prone. This does not seem to give enough commanding flexibility. Now the question is: when should my subordinates move with me, and when should they use cover and move using "bounding overwatch"?

[cas 41]

Nice to see that the developer takes his time to ask for our opinion!

[santafee 10]

Safe

-The Team dont use cover, allways stacks up with the player in given formation.

Aware

-The Team rarely uses cover, they are only "light" breaking the given formation and advance a bit more obsevant.

Combat

-The Team is ready for Engagment, primarly using cover and break formation

for it.They try to stack up and move FAST from Cover to Cover.

Stealth

-The Team moves slow and is hiding from enemys.They break formation for good cover.

Engagment Commands

Fire on my Lead

-The Squad ONLY starts to fire if the player gives the first Shot.

Cease Fire

-The Squad is never firing, also not if detected!

Return Fire

-If the Squad is receiving fire, they answer with engagment.

Prone,Crouch and Up should not have to do anything with the Behaviour of the Units. - When they are commanded to go prone or crouch, that shouldnt change there Behaviour.

[OT sry, but this is needed;-=)^

Anti Tank Weapons:

Please make the Soldiers not engaging Tanks or Armorde Vehicles with Rifles anymore and let them engage FAST with AT Weapons. Tanks actually killing whole Infantry Platoons even if they are with Anti Tanks Stuff.

The Fire or Engagment Commands ive given as example would be a massive improvment also and im sure many people what love to see that!

Notice: I think there are many people which are only using the Editor and playing Singleplayer Missions like me. The most important for a improved SP experience would be the AI and their commands, which are actually very frustrating.So improvments would be pretty nice!Thanks for your great support!

Edited December 1, 2009 by Himmelsfeuer

[wheres my rabbit ? 10]

voted when ordered to take cover (although adding a new order to use bounding would be nice :D )

i'd like the danger order to work like it did in ofp(but a little better)

so when ordered danger and keep low they stay in the ordered formation and copy my stance, if i get up and move they come with me (unless order to stay)

and when i stop they get down again ready to fight..

[rübe 127]

If the stance (prone/kneeling) toggles any of this, please consider this: if your team-mates are all your proximity, then it's really nice to see them going down too. BUT: if I - as a leader - am far away, while my team is somewhere else, this leads to bad results.

Example: In warefare, it happens that I order newly bought units as reinforcements. I give them a waypoint to follow me or I send them somewhere else.. Well, I was prone and it turns out, this forced them into dangermode, thus they would never arrive anywhere.

Thus: only apply this to units that can see you at the moment ingame. Thanks.

[-=seany=- 5]

I would vote for : When I order "Take cover", When I order "Danger" and when group comes "under fire".

But...

What does cover mean to the AI? Are trees and bushes cover? If they enter this mode when we come under fire in an open area are they going to try to run off for 500m to find cover, or do the just go prone if there is no cover? I would not want them to enter this mode when we come under fire if that's the case.

I think when I go prone the AI should go prone and nothing else, the same for Crouch. (and like Ruebe says, only when they are near me. I guess the "Return to formation" command could help with that. Eg Ai not in your formation do not copy the leaders stance.)

Unless it works very well, I think its best to leave changes in combat behaviour to commands given by the leader eg danger, aware etc. Or else I can see see frustration for the player when the AI start doing strange things automatically, or when the leader changes his stance. But if its done well maybe it could work quite nicely.

Edited December 1, 2009 by -=seany=-

[bascule42 10]

although adding a new order to use bounding would be nice

2nd'ed...I voted for when I order to take cover. But a separate command would be great for this.

[NoRailgunner 0]

If fireteam A that moves to point X and exposes themselves to potential enemy fire without protection - fireteam B should take an overwatch position and cover team A.

After fireteam A has reached covered position they will cover fireteam B.

Isnt it better to implement a working command like "cover <selected unit>/<selected group>"?

[walker 0]

Hi all

I voted "When I order them "Danger" " but I would like some modifiers to the behaviour to give alternate bounds when in a hurry or when contact is likely soon but not actualy made; and successive bounds when in actual contact and more cautious. Best of all would be tactical movement orders as a subset as others have stated.

Though successive bounds is more akin to fire and maneuver and thus appropriate when with two or more fire teams.

The ability to designate a base of fire team would be great, but it needs an area supression/cover function too.

Also of import is including of the missing break contact procedure, using a center peel or diagonal retreat method. Something similar to what is described here:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Break_Contact

Kind Regards walker

Edited December 1, 2009 by walker

[TRexian 0]

I voted for danger, but after reading this (and the beta build thread), I would like to offer up a rather different solution.

Documentation.

There are many nuances and subtleties to working with the AI that, once explained, are already workable. But, it is very difficult to stumble into them on our own, or find the gems hidden in various threads. Or worse, de-pbo the stuff and look at the scripting/configs/fsms.

I think a fair amount of these intricacies are things that are just kinda known by those who've played since OFP. Well, many of us haven't. (And that's a good thing.) ;) :)

Please don't take this as wining (although, I guess it is). BI continually proves to be an incredibly responsive software company (not just gaming company). This kind of responsiveness tends to only happen with open source projects (and often not even then)!

But, I look at the module part of the wiki, and there are entries that are less than helpful, and it almost seems like some modules aren't even listed. Just using that to illustrate that now/soon might be a good time to go back and document some of the great features you already have, BEFORE Arrowhead comes out.

Back to the AI issue, though - I suspect there must be some set of FSM diagrams out there that shows how they are supposed to act in certain situations. Sure would be helpful to have those out here. :)

Thanks for all the great support, though.

[Bouben 3]

Well, I think that one of the biggest problems is that AI in an open enviroment without cover tends to stop when fired at. There is nothing more suicidal than to stop on a flat open ground and "overwatch" when under fire. Units ordered to move somewhere should only stop when behind SOLID cover. The "overwatch" should be also much quicker, if under fire. There is no time to watch a beauty of nature.

EDIT: Or AI should be able to be really really fast when in an open enviroment when doing overwatch. Cover is the priority, because if you live, then you can shoot an enemy. If you get killed, what for is your body? :o)

EDIT2: I realized, that one more thing should be tweaked related to the overwatch mode. AI is moving only few meters till they start to cover another one from a group. I think, it shouldn't be related to some distance intervals but instead on moving from cover to cover. So AI will not stop to cover another one, when they have no cover for themselfs. I know that it has a lot of problems connected to it. Just notice.

EDIT3 (about "take cover command"): Also, I think that "take cover command" should be done FAST and somehow "more in panic" rather than with some precise overwatch and bounding. I tend to use "take cover" when I am in an ambush or in something similarly sudden and fast. So there is no time for scan for enemies. Allright, maybe some guys could just start supressive fire while a rest of a group would hide "without any thinking" just to save their asses (so they should run in effect of careless mode or sth). And they shouldn't be runing from cover to cover, when their current cover is good enough. Runing slowly around is the thing that get them killed so often. You know what I mean. Current "take cover" order is quite allright and usefull, but slow and not very reliable.

Other things:

Since I haven't noticed any difference between Combat and Stealth mode then I think that it would be good that units in stealth mode would never run asi if were under fire, but properly and slowly move in prone position MAXimaly in crouch but only if covered. Stealth is about "not being seen and heard" and that's exactly, what stealth in ARMA 2 is not.

This is really difficult problem to solve. Good to see BIS intersted in that.

Edited December 1, 2009 by Bouben

[walker 0]

Hi all

I think TRexian's suggestion of FSM diagrams is an excellent one but I would go a step further among the BI Tools is an FSM editor,

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/BI_Tools_2

those who wish to contribute could use that. It can be used to create save and print such FSM files.

Why not as a community make such an FSM saving the FSM on a download site for others to edit and printing it out for discussion here?

Kind Regards walker

Edited December 1, 2009 by walker

[TRexian 0]

@ Walker -

Not to derail this into a one-on-one discussion :) but I thought of that, too. However, having gotten just a bit of an inkling into the inner scriptology of the BI functions and such, I gotta believe that the fsms are so interlinked that much effort would be wasted on the half-pictures and misdirections that come with reverse engineering what BI already knows.

With great respect - to you and BI - only they know how they want it to work. It could easily be part of the public beta process to say, "When you say danger OR there's shooting going on, the AI are supposed to go from cover to cover. To cancel this, the shooting has to stop AND you have to say Regroup...." or something along those lines.

Cheers. :beer:

[fabrizio_t 58]

Hmm ...

i'd like to see bounding overwatch:

- When I order them "Take cover"

- When somebody is firing at us

- When we see an enemy (being not too far!)

- When I order them "Danger"

When i lay down or crouch i wish my squaddies simply doing the same (don't take me wrong - not automatically) ;)

Also i'd like to see units never stopping in the middle of roads! :)

Seriously i hope to see more difference in COMBAT vs STEALTH mode behaviour, not just some stance change.

Actually it seems AI in COMBAT/STEALTH mode is using indifferently cover and concealing positions.

My suggestion is:

- In stealth mode, while being undetected, AI groups should prefer bounding across concealing position;

- In stealth mode, when detected, AI groups should use both concealing and cover positions;

- in combat mode AI groups should use cover positions, moving to concealed positions only in case no cover is around;

Generally, when detected, groups should do bounds as fast as possible, while when undetected they should move slower/cautiously in my opinion. Only exception i can think of is urban CQB, in this case i would prefer groups to move always slowly.

EDIT: By the way, thx to Suma and BIS for their efforts here!

Edited December 1, 2009 by fabrizio_T
clarification

[Bouben 3]

When i lay down or crouch i wish my squaddies simply doing the same ;)

The problem is, that they will do that even if you're 2 km away and having totally different reason to change your position than they have (for example no reason at all:) )

Exactly because of that I can't use the "copy my stance" mod, cause they were like slaves and it really hurted their effectivity.

[fabrizio_t 58]

The problem is, that they will do that even if you're 2 km away and having totally different reason to change your position than they have (for example no reason at all:) )

Exactly because of that I can't use the "copy my stance" mod, cause they were like slaves and it really hurted their effectivity.

We probably just need the vanilla "copy stance" command working properly for that. I think you can choose to which units assign the command.

Normally i tend to keep my formation tight and/r or split group into a couple teams, under normal circumstances i'm not wishing to have my men more distant than a few hundred meters (for mutual covering purpose) ;)

Edited December 1, 2009 by fabrizio_T
mess

[mr.g-c 6]

Hmm ...

i'd like to see bounding overwatch:

- When I order them "Take cover"

- When somebody is firing at us

- When we see an enemy (being not too far!)

- When I order them "Danger"

When i lay down or crouch i wish my squaddies simply doing the same (don't take me wrong - not automatically) ;)

Also i'd like to see units never stopping in the middle of roads! :)

Seriously i hope to see more difference in COMBAT vs STEALTH mode behaviour, not just some stance change.

Actually it seems AI in COMBAT/STEALTH mode is using indifferently cover and concealing positions.

My suggestion is:

- In stealth mode, while being undetected, AI groups should prefer bounding across concealing position;

- In stealth mode, when detected, AI groups should use both concealing and cover positions;

- in combat mode AI groups should use cover positions, moving to concealed positions only in case no cover is around;

Generally, when detected, groups should do bounds as fast as possible, while when undetected they should move slower/cautiously in my opinion. Only exception i can think of is urban CQB, in this case i would prefer groups to move always slowly.

EDIT: By the way, thx to Suma and BIS for their efforts here!

Absolutely Quoted for Truth, can't add anything more!

Besides: Thank you very much Suma for your continuous interest in improving vital parts of your game/engine (the AI!).

Makes me also very confident that AI will get in future (even if just at OA) some sort of a "basic survival/self-caring FSM" because currently without waypoints they act very very strange when getting under fire or whatever happens. (But thats a different Topic).

[suma 8]

As a next step to make AI control cleaner, based on this poll, rev. 60718 will contain following changes:

- AI now goes to Combat behaviour automatically only when under fire, not when player is prone.

- AI follows leader stance, but does not switch to combat behaviour when player is prone.

[cas 41]

Good changes!

[ACF 0]

I really must learn to type faster...

It certainly seems a good idea to disassociate stance from behaviour. Will be interesting to see...

[Bouben 3]

As a next step to make AI control cleaner, based on this poll, rev. 60718 will contain following changes:

- AI now goes to Combat behaviour automatically only when under fire, not when player is prone.

- AI follows leader stance, but does not switch to combat behaviour when player is prone.

Cool, so will they now follow even crouch positions? I had an idea, that when leader crouch, they could be crouching too or laying but not standing. Simply, they would be lower or even with leader, but never above him (isn't that real tactics actually?)

And one more question? Will they switch to combat behaviour when taking cover, but not being under fire?

Thank you!

Edited December 1, 2009 by Bouben

[lwlooz 0]

Hey, this is great.

I already tried to elaborate a bit on this on devheaven , but I will add a bit to the previous posts here as well and hope it helps.

I voted for "When somebody is firing on us". Of all the options available it seems to me that is the least likely one to screw up your squad control when you don't want to.

It is not fail-safe tho.

The problem is that the use of bounding overwatch depends on other variables besides behaviour like distance to leader , perceived danger , available cover and tactical situational awareness I am afraid the AI will never get.

Therefore in the near future I would suggest spending some time giving the player a mostly fail-safe way of formation control that could deal with this problem of loss of squad control while allowing for autonomous AI behaviour:

Fall Back in Formation:

As I tried to explain on some dev-heaven notes , the most fail-safe way of dealing with this is simply if you just can "abort" their bounding overwatch whenever its misused or they are stuck in some cover. (Reference:

Formation Keeping based on Distance

)

This is already one command that is there , doesn't quite work in "Combat"-Mode anymore and to me seems to be the most straightforward way to exercise control of your AI subordinates.

Personally I think the "Take Cover"-Option should have nothing to do with them using bounding overwatch or not , but a quick way of getting your AI into the next cover when you get shot at.

Same goes for "Laying Down" or "Crouching". To me there seems to be no logical connection between the two.

In the distant future it might be an idea to implement an extra way of formation control by giving the player the option to chose formation form of:

1. Close: AI will not stray far from leader even if little cover avaible
   
2. Loose: AI will try cover to the utmost effect , but keeping cohesion
   
3. Free: AI will use bounding overwatch and take cover themselves and will be more free in the distance to chose their cover from.
   

[NOTE: Even in "Free"-mode AI will temporarily come back to you if you use "Fall Back in Formation"]

In conclusion , for player lead AI I see the behaviour-modes ("Safe","Aware","Combat","Stealth") mostly as definition of AI aggressiveness and while it should play a role for how much the AI looks for cover , more control over that is needed and for autonomous AI behaviour("Bounding Overwatch") there needs to be a on/off switch in the future.

[Bouben 3]

Fall Back in Formation:

As I tried to explain on some dev-heaven notes , the most fail-safe way of dealing with this is simply if you just can "abort" their bounding overwatch whenever its misused or they are stuck in some cover. (Reference:

Formation Keeping based on Distance

)

Very interesting and with lot of potential! BIS should take a look at it.

Personally I think the "Take Cover"-Option should have nothing to do with them using bounding overwatch or not , but a quick way of getting your AI into the next cover when you get shot at.

Same goes for "Laying Down" or "Crouching". To me there seems to be no logical connection between the two.

In the distant future it might be an idea to implement an extra way of formation control by giving the player the option to chose formation form of:

1. Close: AI will not stray far from leader even if little cover avaible

2. Loose: AI will try cover to the utmost effect , but keeping cohesion

3. Free: AI will use bounding overwatch and take cover themselves and will be more free in the distance to chose their cover from.

Exactly!

Edited December 1, 2009 by Bouben

[ACF 0]

I was going to go with "When somebody is firing at us"

As a group commander, I can control the overwatch/fire and movement of the group before contact: I can split them into teams or nominate groups on the fly and move them alternately over sensible bounds.

When under effective enemy fire AI should react without input from me and take cover. Units that locate the enemy could/should attempt quick suppression but not hang about in the open. You could say they should start autonomous bounding overwatch to get into cover, but they really should be bounding, not watching.

The point is that I shouldn’t have to tell them to stay alive. They should react sensibly, my job is to regain control by getting some or all of them to disengage and move where I want them. A single ‘follow me (quickly and forget everything else)’ command to do this would be a nice extra, in the same vein as a 'take cover (and then return fire if you can)' command.

As stated above, the sensible reaction is a factor of distance from the threat - is this or can this be considered?

[Heatseeker 0]

As a next step to make AI control cleaner, based on this poll, rev. 60718 will contain following changes:

- AI now goes to Combat behaviour automatically only when under fire, not when player is prone.

- AI follows leader stance, but does not switch to combat behaviour when player is prone.

I voted for when under fire and when i order them to take cover, its nice to see this comand finally become usefull.