Bouben

Wow, a behaviour/tactics editor for players in some functional GUI would be amazing! You would just set your own rules for your squad and then called those rules with predefined commands. You could then prepare yourself for whole bunch of situations with few presses of buttons.

Excellent! Will try ASAP! Thank you, Fabrizio!

Very well written. I completely agree.

Yes, definitely possible because of the code. I have not meant to be ungrateful for the AI that we have now (and for the devs). I just feel there is so much potential that have not been exploited yet because it just isn't a priority for selling the game. I am honest. ---------- Post added at 17:43 ---------- Previous post was at 17:38 ---------- And of course I agree with Variable. There is a huge need to fine-tune and fix current issues with the AI before adding new features.

Yes. I mean, this is so absurd that I cannot stress out how much I am surprised that it (unresponsive AI) has not been addressed yet. For movement orders alone, I want different options. Move carefully with bounding overwatch, move fast but react to enemy fire, move fast and ignore everything around you, move in crouch but immediatelly go prone when you stop, move in standing postition and then immediatelly go prone when stop etc. The AI is unable to decide this for themselves at the moment. We need more options with orders. Also, we need a "never, under whatever circumstances fire" command and many others... Rearming is also major pain with AI as player has no easy way of telling them how to do it properly. And there are also those clearly left-alone features like "stealth" mode which is completely, utterly useless. Or the never explained difference between the stop command and the wait command. There is so many issues with AI and commanding. For years.

The example with AI rearming colliding with running for their life would be easy to fix if a player has a simple command "run for your lifes and don't look back". Such a command would simply disabled everything unwanted at the moment and AI commanding would be super-predictable - that means good. New commands could solve many many issues with AI. In cases where AI is needed to work without player input come scripts from mission makers. Again, just disable what you don't want to happen. It is much better to have something to disable than no way how to enable something. Give commanding players more control over the AI. Also, I am sure that a lot of current AI priority checks could be improved immensely and lot of AI features could be fine-tuned. Look at the bCombat, which is unfortunately limited by the current AI code. And I am not that kind of an uncritical player that would praise any AI mod out there. Actually, bCombat is the first AI mod that really improves the behaviour of units and keeps everything else compatible (apart from AI fleeing from armored enemy, there is some problem with that). Every other mod, in my opinion, does/did it wrong with too many vanilla compatibility problems, with too many compromises in other AI areas.

God damn you, hardcoded AI! Thanks for the insight, Fab.

Isn't the VAC supplied with some scripts that would influence AI?

Fabrizio, would it be possible to make AI run for their lives (covered) when an enemy armour is around and they have no means of destroying it?

Sorry, but I prefer bCombat, which is most probably not compatible with ASR AI, of which AI features I don't like. ---------- Post added at 21:41 ---------- Previous post was at 21:38 ---------- Well, you don't have an easy task. About the artillery... I believe most of the time AI cannot use it effectively enough. I would prefer if sides spawned more versatile units instead because artillery is often positioned right in the front line where it gets massacred.

Hi, if an AI AT guy is killed, will the rest of the squad try to acquire the dropped launcher with this mod?

Signed.

The documentation thing...I refuse to believe that. But my refusal is diminishing every day.

Unfortunately, I know that. I am just keeping hope...

Mandatory should be to fix the AI issues in the vanilla by the devs themselves after all those years of bugtracking them. EDIT: I mean, while the devs are indeed active in the Arma development, the AI neglecting cannot be denied. They simply have priorities elsewhere while AI is in a very bad shape.

There is a huge problem with AI not healing themselves even when they are unable to run as a result of their injuries. This slows down the whole group which is pain in the ass for AI groups that are supposed to keep some reasonable tempo... I suppose the fix would be easy.

Exactly.

This.

Ryd, I love you. Thank you for this. You have the best missions and best features. With bCombat, this will be really something. UPDATE: However, you should disable fatigue for AI units as they have to cover big distances in your scenarios. After a while the game become tedious. Also, you should prevent side from spawning useless artillery, because it just occupies slots for more useful armored units. Also, it would be good if you could do something with AI leaders not healing themselves as they are slow when injured and slowdown the whole group movement. UPDATE: Also, helicopters and vehicles spawning on a steep side of a hill are problematic :-)

The grass clearing is most of the time completely useless. There are situations, where it can help, but you have to have height difference between you and your target in order to make use of the clearing. Other than that, you summarized it nicely. It is all about compromises but some implementations of those compromises in the current game are questionable.

Read my post above. ---------- Post added at 16:04 ---------- Previous post was at 16:03 ---------- Read my post above.

And the proof that the situation in the video is wrong is that I put myself behind a different bush and put an AI on the other side facing the same bush. Both units only 5 metres apart. Now, if your theories were correct, the AI would see and hear me firing through the bush. The AI would calculate that I am immediately behind the same bush it is standing by. However, the AI is unable to even blind fire through the bush. Therefore, the AI is unable to see me, is unable to calculate my invisible position by hearing me clearly from close and is unable to return fire at all. So, this is the proof that AI is completely robotic and stupid and that your theories about super-sophisticated AI deducing player's position based on clues is wrong. That means, that AI in the video is not behaving correctly. If its behaviour was correct, it would be unable to return fire because the code would tell it to be unable to do it. My main suspicion is now pointed to the wrong viewgeometry LOD of that particular tree in the video in that particular direction. UPDATE: Another extreme of this behaviour is, that AI is unable to see me in situations where it clearly should. I can clearly see the AI behind the bush I described earlier but AI is completely ignoring me. Therefore I think that viewgeometry LODs are wrong or the AI tolerance threshold for small spaces between branches and leaves is wrong. Or the AI is able to identify player only by particular parts of avatar's body and therefore have very small resolution of what it can see and what not. If the detectable part is not in its LOS, the AI would not see the player's avatar. In other words, there is so many problems to solve with AI... UPDATE2: This all, however, does not explain the problems with grass. Bushes are completely different from grass in the game and are handled as objects. Grass is not an object in Arma and therefore LOS calculations are not behind the decision making with grass. Visibility in grass is even more problematic than LOS calculations with objects because it is completely approximate. The height and thickness of a grass have no effect on LOS calculations. However, the situation with grass is much better than it was in Arma 2. UPDATE3: It also seems that main factor for AI deducing based on hearing is the distance at which the bullets are landing near the AI position. The AI was able to blind fire through bush only if my shots landed on the AI's side of the ground - behind the bush. If the bullets were stopped by the bush itself, the AI was unable to respond. I mean, this does not make any sense. There is so many flaws with the current AI system. It really starts to crack and break and show its flaws the more you test it.

Sure, there is a value, but the value does not respect the actual visual behaviour of the flash and smoke pixel-per-pixel. Therefore it is just flash = true/false and some flash value and then some simplified check if the flash could be seen. I don't believe there is an algorithm counting every pixel around the flash to calculate if it is visible or not (obstacles, direction of smoke particles, colour of background at which the flash and smoke is shown etc.) . And that is the problem. It is just approximate and therefore you cannot speculate about millimetre bullshit between individual leaves. UPDATE: And to be fair, to the devs, I can imagine this shit is super-hard to program correctly and believably. There is so much you have to consider when making AI for open-world simulation game. No joke.

Of course, it does not make any sense. There is a clear problem with the first encounter in the video. My theory is this: a) AI spotting is bugged (which it is, unless the grass is considered as an object itself) b) view geometry LOD is bugged c) AI was pointed to your location by another AI unit that was able to see you - in such case the blind fire mechanic would be bugged

Yes, the LOD might be problematic too.