I didn't see any post on "my" topic so I will start a new one ...
I will start my point by following statements:
(Current) OFP AI is good at:
o walking long distances to specified location
o driving vehicle(s) to specified location
o lying in a bush for an hour without complain
o spotting an enemy in AI's vicinity and reporting it
(Current) OFP AI is not good at:
making combat decisions
o making analysed report of what it "see" (such us "enemy is building a base in Petrovice")
o finding places (like "the best place to hide", "the place with best view", "finding flag")
o taking cover
o AI activity is limited to the activities from the "Command menu"
o AI doesn't always listen to commands for whatever reason including bugs in OFP
What I would like to see in OFP2 is ability to choose who you want to be from the AI squad you command/own. For example, I am a squad commander and I have sniper three miles away waiting for enemy to come. Sniper is ordered "to not fire". After an half hour the sniper reports that the enemy arrived. In that moment I want to "switch into the sniper's body" and and control the sniper in First Person View fashion. This way I would basicaly take just the fun part of the sniper's job - making decision when to shoot, whom to shot first, and the shooting. When the shooting is done I want to switch back to commander's body (or other AI soldier I own). During the time I am in "another body" the AI would take control of my "original body".
I actually would like this feature as an OFP1 upgrade - I am even willing to pay for it :-) - otherwise I will have to wait for this till 2005-2006).
I think this feature would make OFP perfect combination between First Person Shooters and Real Time Strategy games. I epecially would like to see it in multiplayer - I am missing it in the excelent OFP mod - Capture The Island (Mike Melvin - the MFCTI leader - actually told me that he will try to implement this in MFCTI 1.2).
It would be especially beneficial for boring parts of OFP - walking or driving to long distances (mind that OFP maps are HUGE ! ... and especially in multiplayer you have no option to speed up the time), or anoying parts of OFP where you can't explain to your AI soldiers what you want - and especially anoying parts of OFP when AI refuses to do what it is told. I especially remember the "Search And Destroy" mission when I was supposed to find and destroy Scud. I put my objectives even higher - I wanted to destroy all enemy. To do that I needed to take Scud & Shilkas first, then call my choppers and then my tanks to finish remaining armor and infantry. I spent an half hour positioning my anti armor guys around enemy to have clear shots at Shilkas. Then I ordered them to fire. It was crucial that all Shilkas were destroyed. But one of my AI was simply refusing to make a shot. You know that answer - Negative. ... I had to kill my AI, take his LAW and take the last Shilka ... Or another situation is that your tank driver listens to you perfectly for an half hour and almost always when an enemy is spotted he refuses to move to places where I order him to go. Â Following "conversation" with my AI usually ends with my tank being dead within next ten seconds. In this situation I would like to be able to simply "switch into the driver's body", drive the tank where I want, then switch to the gunner's body and destroy the enemy. I don't want to be fighting with menu and numeric codes to explain my anyway not listening AI what to do.
This functionality would be great for having for example stationary snipers, or just getting to places. Snipers by definition are supposed to stay and wait for enemy to come, or move just very slowly into their position. I can't imagine a human game-player lying on a spot for twenty minutes to wait for the enemy (lot of the time game would be over and your game experience would be that you lied in the bush whole game - not exactly fun). With the "switch person" functionality you can do other things and then switch yourself into snipers's body after he reports enemy.
AI is good at boring tasks such as walk or drive to some place (since OFP maps are huge, especially walking 10 minutes through empty terrain is not much fun), or wait and observe. Having the switching functionality would greatly improve fun of the OFP game, AI would do the boring part, gamers would do the fun part ...
One crucial element of this feature would be that you would have to be able to switch into different body very quickly. I would like to switch to for example "soldier #2" by keyboard shortcut - for example by double pressing the F2 key.
For those saying that switching body is not real - yes, from individual point of view it is not real - sure. But from the battle point of view this WILL make the battle outcome more realistic because soldiers behaving as the current AI is - are not realistic either so taking them over by human player is more real for the battle. (if BIS surprise me and make AI as intelligent as human players are (well, some of them are not very intelligent, but fortunately most of those do not play OFP ;-) ) then I will humbly take my hat down and will personally attend the Nobel prices ceremony where BIS team will take major prices for finally making "the intelligent AI dream" come true :-) ). The "switching" Â could be configurable/optional, so players who do not want it can turn it off, or it could be enabled only for multiplayer or mission replay.
