fabrizio_t

Hmm i didn't configure Pw6 version, it was done by Sonsalt i guess. However, @bcombat folder should be placed into ArmA3 main directory. Remove any old contents. The folder should contain exactly the files / folders shown here: https://github.com/fabrizioT/bCombat Basically: 3 folders (Addons, fsm, lib), three .sqf files (bcombat.sqf, bdetect.sqf, config.sqf) as well as readme.md and some misc files.

Steam version updated to v0.18 BETA. Further changes to AI aggressivity being tested. After skipping v0.17 final i wish to release v0.18 final ASAP.

There are ways aroud this. About stance, bCombat uses this logic: 1) use default "AUTO" stance (= vanilla stance) 2) switch to crouch whenever lightly threatened, stay so for a handful of seconds unless something happens. Then back to 1) 3) switch to prone when under fire. Stay so for a handful of seconds unless something happens. Then back to 2). Still units are made able to stand and sprint whenever needed. Now, let's imagine some unit having a small wall between it and some unknown enemy. When enemy opens fire this unit will immediately switch to prone, as a reaction to area fire. It will stay prone or crawl around as long as its kept suppressed by fire (notice that this is useful for pin-and-move tactics!). Then it will gradually raise its stance, clearing its LOS in the steps prone-crouched-standing. This way it will progressively expose a target with the minimum size. I remember having set a stance constraint in bCombat, limiting the possibility to switch to prone whenever height over terrrain is over some threshold (e.g. tower, upper floors). I have to double check whether this logic is still in place, as i worked on this much time ago. This is kind of a poor-man solution, but it's cheap and will work in most situations. About the "massive LOS real-time checking" matter: bCombat does a lot of real-time LOS checking, especially in CQB. Visibility checks are used for many purposes. Here are just a few simplified examples: A unit is issued a FIRE task (forcing it to open fire instantly) only if it has actual visibility on at least part of a target. If there's no visibility a SUPPRESSIVE FIRE task may be triggered instead, meaning unit will fire on the general area of the target. when some unit loses visibility on its target, but that's near,a LOB grenade routine is triggered. Grenade trajectory is then evaluated: bCombat makes possible grenade lobbing just a few meters away or well over a tall roof ( , ) if some units loses visibility on a far target there's a chance that the CHASE or INVESTIGATE ( ) routine are triggered, unit will stalk the enemy based on its last known position. Only if they've got visibility on enemy (plus other criteria) AI units will pop smoke to conceal themselves. Visibility of friendly units matters too. An example is the WATCH-MY-SIX routine: it basically work with triangular checking: if some unit is fired upon by some enemy and both them are in the LOS of a friendly, given some criteria this one will open fire on the enemy to protect its buddy. Triangular checking is also used in the case of OVERWATCH ( ) routine. I won't go into detail, i think you got the picture. Hope what i wrote makes sense, as you know i'm not an english speaker. Good night.

I'd say they don't. They just know they haven't a clear LOS. It can be scripted (bCombat does massive use of LOS real-time checking, especially in CQB), but computational power would be overkill when many units are on the battlefield.

Probably some pathfinding issue, like when units move back and forth. I'd say not caused by bCombat though, except IF leader is actually moving towards some cover. In that case movement should be no more than bcombat_cover_radius settings (meters) AND leader should have been fired upon immediately before ...

I've just published a minor update to v0.18 BETA on GitHub, here is the changelog for most important changes: * Command "setUnitPosWeak" used for stance handling, so that it can be overridden by issuing a "setUnitPos" command * Small shooting accuracy buff to machinegunners * Further (subtle) prioritization of moving vs. firing for a unit which is not threatened. This to further compensate for ArmA 1.3X increased frequency of enemy detection signals Debug is off by default. ---------- Post added at 20:28 ---------- Previous post was at 20:26 ---------- You should see "bCombat 1.18 BETA" instead, it's likely you have a conflict between different versions of the mod. Check your installation, follow installation instructions shown on GitHub. Userconfig is not needed. EDIT: my fault, forgot to update mod version in mod.cpp. Fixed now. ---------- Post added at 20:29 ---------- Previous post was at 20:28 ---------- Now that's a question. Answer is lengthy and boring, are you sure you're willing to read it? ;)

Thank you and as i wrote above, nice video.

I've found a nice video showing bCombat v0.18 BETA in action (ArmA2 units): * Much smoke popping at about 2:05 * A unit fleeing at 2:45 * Precision CQB grenade lobbing at 3:05, but action is clipped. * Violent "cornering" at 3:26 ( some other mod kicks in, as the "killed" BLUFOR unit acts in a bizarre way ) * Nice grenade lobbing at 8:20 ;) overall, a hail of gunfire and a prolonged fight. Shame pathfinding looks sometimes troublesome on that map.

HandleDamage is used only for 2 purposes: * handling bcombat_damage_multiplier when set to some value different than 1 * Avoiding friendly kills if bcombat_allow_friendly_capped_damage = true. Other than for these cases bCombat does not fiddle with damage. SetSkill is interactively used in order to manage AI behaviour, it's not possible to skip it without breaking bCombat internal mechanics. Finally, bCombat should be placed into Arma 3 folder, it's a known limitation.

Care to elaborate more about your questions? What do you mean, you want to make units invulnerable?

About reinforcements, radios will fill the gap. It's quite some time i'm developing the feature since it is tricky to have done it right, however development goes on. Mortars can be an interesting feature even for group level tactics. Some time ago i made a script allowing single foot units to transport, assemble, disassemble and fire mortars on their own. It also allowed also player to direct their fire (point and click target), when playing as leader. All in all it was a raw piece of code, but it may be worth refining.

In my experience using the overridable alternative command setUnitPosWeak gave mixed results. However it was quite some time ago. I'll give it a try again. ---------- Post added at 21:32 ---------- Previous post was at 21:29 ---------- Please consider that units choose their stance already (standing, crouching or prone) depending on situation. I agree that in very specific cases it may be useful to be able to force units' stance though.

It affects any units in the group of the player, whatever his role. It affects all the skills, accuracy included. ---------- Post added at 20:36 ---------- Previous post was at 20:06 ---------- NOTICE Please consider that only GitHub version of bCombat was updated to v0.18 BETA. Armaholic updated release will be notified soon. Steam / WithSIX versions need different packaging and will follow later.

Hi. Please consider that bCombat does not affect in any way vehicles and/or units in vehicles.

Yes, sometimes ;)

Mass surrendering is indeed 100% related to the recent vanilla AI "feature" i commented above. Fix is not overly problematic however, i'm already testing a few workarounds. In the meantime disabling surrendering feature would suffice ( set: bcombat_allow_surrender = false; ). Then, please consider that: * there's a cap already on minimum firing accuracy, which dampens morale effects. * units suffering a high morale hit are a lot less prone to return fire, they usually resort moving away instead. This as long as they don't feel cornered (e.g. pinned into cover). * units skill affects overall accuracy and how strong morale is hit by events. Try playing with units with high skill and you'll notice they play more aggressively. * squad level morale is already taken into account. Leader's morale does affect the chance of units to flee / surrender for instance ( modeling loss of leadership ). Squad casualties also affect single units morale. Recommended difficulty settings are vanilla settings: normal / expert. I don't suggest playing with custom settings, unless you feel it's needed of course. I agree that machinegunners' accuracy is a tad low (it's already like that in vanilla, just less noticeable since overall accuracy is higher), but you have to consider that since bCombat introduces suppression fire ( =area fire) penalties their high ROF and range alone assure the achievement of some tactical advantage. They're very valuable in pinning enemy down and hitting his morale even if they can't hit him precisely. That's the purpose of the "Overwatch" feature. ---------- Post added at 15:40 ---------- Previous post was at 15:32 ---------- The issue you describe is usually due to bad interaction / interference of different AI mods. Please try running bCombat alone, i'm confident your issue will disappear.

The reason AI units are surrendering much more (too much, actually) with recent ArmA3 builds is that AI units are now notified much more frequently of same enemies by core AI routines. Not sure whether it's a feature or a bug, since now the same enemy can be notified to some unit up to 10-20 times per-minute. Previously a single enemy was usually notified to some unit no more than once in a whole battle, so the difference is striking. This has effects on bCombat morale, which seems depleting at an excessive rate. Interesting stuff. Digging, testing and analyzing.

First of all, happy new year to everybody. Hi Orcinus, the reason for the friendly fire damage cap is that bCombat allows units to fight with very low accuracy settings due to morale hits. This may cause friendly fire issues. Common causes are wild fire of almost panicking machinegunners, or AI units stupidly crossing the bline of fire. To avoid massive friendly killings, bcombat_friendly_fire_max_damage lets you specify the maximum amount of damage ( 0 - 1) caused by friendly fire that should be sustained by some unit. On default settings that unit won't be killed, but it will still sustain massive damage ( bcombat_friendly_fire_max_damage = 0.8 as default). Keep in mind that damage affects morale recovery and overall accuracy, so friendly fire DOES still play a role, it just does not kill. Please consider that bcombat_friendly_fire_max_damage is applied only as long as bcombat_allow_friendly_capped_damage is set to true. Setting bcombat_allow_friendly_capped_damage to false effectively disables friendly fire cap altogether, whatever the value of bcombat_friendly_fire_max_damage. Two important remarks: * friendly fire cap is NEVER applied to player. You will be fully affected (= killed) by frendly fire. Be careful. * friendly fire cap is NEVER applied to units fired upon by the player. You may kill your squaddies. Again, careful! ---------- Post added at 20:49 ---------- Previous post was at 20:44 ---------- I suggest using Notepad++, but i think any text editor will work. bcombat_allow_surrender = false; Should suffice to exclude surrendering behaviour. At least it's working ok for me. Be sure you DON'T launch the game with -noFilePatching startup parameter. NOTE: on a sidenote, i noticed AI units tend surrendering quite a lot with recent ArmA3 builds. Routine is being reworked to better fit the new AI behaviour. ---------- Post added at 20:55 ---------- Previous post was at 20:49 ---------- Still v0.17RC. I had very few spare time till now. Now i'm re-analyzing AI behaviour, since recent builds brought quite some changes. AI units seem now more aware of environmental "events", which is good, but it means some rebalancing of bCombat features is needed. Nothing big, but i find AI units a bit over-sensitive with current configuration, as their morale drops quite fast. ---------- Post added at 20:57 ---------- Previous post was at 20:55 ---------- See my comment above.

bCombat does not affect behaviour of any vehicles, just foot units. ---------- Post added at 12:11 ---------- Previous post was at 12:07 ---------- The smoke issue should be already fixed, are you running latest bCombat version? It's v0.17RC. Grenades are automatically added to inventory as long as bcombat_grenades_additional_number is > 0 (which is default). Please check into config.sqf. ---------- Post added at 12:14 ---------- Previous post was at 12:11 ---------- It would be probably possible, but costly. In my opinion it would need too much effort to achieve such a "minor" feature, sorry.

For sure no. Yet i've traveling a lot and having many job tasks to deal with, so for the moment my spare time is zeroed. Once i'm done with all this, bCombat will move on.

I've tweaked a bit accuracy (lowered) and reduced awareness for silenced weapons. It plays well in my opinion. I had no chance to finalize and publish v0.17 final as i wished, sorry for that. Dayjob takes its toll on my time, currently.

I'd say v0.17 will be the reference, as some features are improved over v0.16. The issue reported here is with silenced weapons and in my opinion it will be lessened thanks to the "muzzle" fix. I'm not overly concerned about hearing abilities. By default hearing radius is bigger in v0.17 and seems fine to me, but hearing can be tweaked ( or removed ) into config.sqf. It's a matter of balancing and it's highly subjective. Keep your current version, switch to v0.17 FINAL when released ;) ---------- Post added at 10:12 ---------- Previous post was at 09:58 ---------- Some vanilla AI issues where definetely lessened. For instance the insta-knowledge of any targets shared across groups is still there, but at least looks like its effects have been mitigated. This actually improves bCombat behaviour as well ;) ---------- Post added at 10:14 ---------- Previous post was at 10:12 ---------- I'll try "Breaking Even" with the "fixed" v0.17 dev version in order to check the outcome.

Bounding movement is tied to Vanilla COMBAT behaviour (as well as STEALTH). That's some very special behaviour which is triggered automatically, unless group was assigned a CARELESS behaviour. It may be triggered just by some enemy coming into sight, which usually does not make much sense. We can't do much to exclude COMBAT behaviour, unless BIS finally gives us some override. It's some years we debate this matter and i've asked for a simple forceMove command to be added for ages now ... ---------- Post added at 11:01 ---------- Previous post was at 11:00 ---------- max1944's reply is right ;) ---------- Post added at 11:06 ---------- Previous post was at 11:01 ---------- Err ... i was speaking about a bCombat issue, not a vanilla issue. Somewhat worsening behaviour. To be fair i'd say vanilla gameplay with silenced weapons works more credibly now . I remember having issues with detection in the past (as you pointed out), but looks to me that recent builds (1.30+) lessened these problems.

in v0.17 aiming accuracy is handled differently, yet i don't think they're aimbots. It's a matter of preference i guess.

Well, to be fair this video almost proves that with bCombat AI is actually unable to see well at night without NVGs. Infact you were able to move to about 75 meters in front of an enemy AI squad, on open terrain, without even alerting them ... So in my opinion night sight is ok. What i think may deserve some tuning down is how AI units are able to pinpoint gunfire (at short distance) by hearing only, when not directly facing the shooter. Video won't help in this case, since you were firing basically in front of some enemies, so they can see your muzzle flash. Distance is very close too. This gives out your approximate position and from such a short distance even some inaccurate suppressive / blind fire would catch you easily. A better test would be ambushing enemy units from back and from no closer than about 100 meters in my opinion (*), unless we over-existimate the efficiency of suppressors. I'm doing a few tests with such a scenario, in order to evaluate enemy reaction. (*) I was told by a "pro" that a suppressed SMG "thud" can be clearly heard in a silent environment even at about 50 meters. Not sure whether that's true or not, but that's the info i was given. ---------- Post added at 13:24 ---------- Previous post was at 12:02 ---------- EDIT: After testing, i've not seen major issues with night visibility / audibility in v0.17 RC. This said, a minor issue exists, related to muzzle visibility for silenced weapons. It makes AI units a bit too efficient in seeing incoming fire from silenced weapons. This has been fixed in my internal testing build. Fix to be released with next build.