nkenny

LAMBS Danger.fsm Current version 2.5.0 - Turing Requires CBA_A3 Changelog Added new FSM with greatly streamlined performance and functionality Added Group Memory layer for CQB Added infantry cover seeking function Added infantry ability to reposition within buildings Added better checks to skip out FSM if AI behaviour is forced Added new leadership assessment, contact, and tactics state Added Group Attack -- making the entire group attack a single target Added Group Garrison -- letting groups temporarily garrison buildings Added Group Hold – groups without clear sight of enemies or when overwhelmed by enemy fire will reassess while hiding and manning nearby static weapons Added group ability to respond to distant snipers by suppression or garrisoning or counter-attacking Added Dynamic Reinforcement framework with a reinforcement event handler* Added Eden settings to toggle group AI and reinforcement option Added improvements to taskAssault waypoint (reliability and tactical proficiency) Add two different ‘contact states** Added ability for vehicles to call artillery fires Added more refined support for ACE3 medical AI. (Fewer instances of AI attempting first aid while engaging or under fire). Added friendly fire check to AI called artillery Added units set to ‘FULL’ speedMode will not choose slow or defensive tactical options. Added improved handling of mechanized/armoured infantry working in conjunction with tanks. Tanks will cover while infantry attack Added post-contact behaviour. Units with active groupMemory will continue clearing suspected enemy locations. Added more active use of ‘enableAttack’ in contact and group actions to more tightly control AI. Added and improved player UI elements Added Polish Localisation Added Russian Localisation Added many performance fixes and enhancements Improved mod file structure for easier maintenance Improved FSM priorities for added dynamism Improved vehicle AI performance and speed Improved infantry group AI in scope and intelligence Improved CQB ability by increasing aggression and movement speeds Improved infantry dodging and seeking cover Improved group flanking Improved group hiding Improved group assaults in speed and consistency Improved check body routines by differentiating between allies and enemies and adding a shared communications and group memory layer Improved fleeing state in speed and cover seeking ability by assessing enemies within line of sight or current suppression states Improved and fixed various aspects of civilian AI Improved armed trucks will continuously suppress targets and will attempt to shift location if threatened. Improved handling and threat management of armoured vehicles shifting locations Improved FSM timings Improved many debug markers and system messages Improved group assessment state with better performance and more intelligent responses to enemy presence Improved AI will attempt to suppress targets at longer ranges Improved AI will use ‘hide’ and ‘garrison’ tactics in smarter, less intrusive manners. Improved debug information with more salient content in Debug UI Improved debug draw performance Fixed Debug UI not resetting on Single player Restart Fixed Debug UI not removing old and unused controls correctly Fixed group hiding from being too invasive Fixed Infantry fighting vehicles and tanks unwillingness to destroy buildings held by enemies. Fixed AI units becoming stuck in ‘ATTACK’ pattern when an enemy is incapacitated with ACE3 enabled. Fixed civilian AI running in place Fixed Static artillery (mortars and modded guns) not resetting after a fire mission. Fixed AI less likely to drop prone away from cover Fixed packing and unpacking static weapons. Occasionally modded weapons would fail to register. Function more reliable overall. Fixed units that have gone through a contact state will always re-assess. Fixed units without ready weapons attempting to assault into CQB! Fixed friendly fire issue with contact state Changed lambs_wp_fnc_taskReset now returns a group instead of boolean. Removed CQB formations*** Version 2.5.0 This is the long-awaited full structural improvement and rewrite of the mod. It comes with a fresh new FSM and reorganised and improved functions. In truth, the listed changelog does not do it justice as nearly every function has been improved or expanded. Listing all changes would add page upon page. Tactically, the AI is smarter than ever. Individually, the new FSM brings an entirely new experience in fighting AI. Responsiveness has been much improved, and the AI is more likely to apply suppressive fire to known and suspected enemy positions. Group assessment stages have been equally improved and the group tactics have been painstakingly tested and tried and expanded. Units engaged in CQB will share targets and building information within their own group. This adds a group memory layer, which means units will try to search through and attack suspected enemy positions in a coordinated manner. Units that are out of range will contribute suppressive fire. Reinforcements This version also adds a simple, yet potent reinforcement system connected directly to the information sharing feature. Reinforcing groups will make simple pre-battle assessments and may deploy or pack static weapons, change formations, or other acts of reorganisation. As always, it is non-invasive and is only activated on groups set by the mission maker. Use is easy. Set a variable on the group, and this unit will now respond when allies within radio communication range call for help. Setting the variable can be done in multiple ways: Either through Zeus modules, Eden settings, or writing it directly to the group. <group> setVariable [“lambs_danger_enableGroupReinforce”, true, true]; With an entirely new FSM framework and reorganised file structure, we’re expecting some trouble. Though rigorously tested internally, in many large scale games, there will unquestionably be some hiccups. We will be on the ball to fix these as they come. The new FSM brought with it some changes in functionality. Among those features which have been temporarily disabled are the CQB Formations module. The functionality exists in the back end, but the group memory feature is set to do a better job. We will listen to feedback in regards to re-implementing this in the future. Many of the internal functions have been moved from the lambs_danger to the lambs_main module. This is part of the mod restructure, which makes the mod easier to maintain, more portable, and more customizable for the end-user. It comes with the unfortunate price of having to re-check your settings. Finally, the team would like to give thanks to: DarkWanderer for excellent feedback on the civilian.fsm. MiszczuZPolski and Veteran29 for Polish translations and FoxnotMulder and Necrossin for Russian translations. From the team diwako / joko / nkenny --- STEAM Workshop --- GitHub --- Discord Addendum: 1. REINFORCEMENT. The reinforcement feature could do with a few more words. Groups with the reinforcement variable set will respond to friendly information sharing events. If the enemy is known, they will move towards that location. If not, they will move to the unit calling for help. - Groups will act with increased autonomy. Based on the distance and visibility of the enemy they will: Adopt formation changes. Shoot flares. Pack and unpack carried static weapons. More types of behaviour will be added in the future. Be aware that the reinforcement feature may override existing waypoints based on the context of the situation. - The level of emergent play can be enhanced by attaching more checks to the eventhandler: “lambs_main_onReinforce”. As per our design philosophy, the default implementation remains seamless. You won’t see AI randomly stealing cars or wandering away from their assigned tasks! 2. CONTACT. On first spotting, the enemy or being fired at the unit will enter a contact state. This version expands the previous behaviour by introducing an aggressive Push-through response to units that, though threatened, are not both suppressed and surprised. In the aggressive response, the enemy will suppress known or likely enemy locations and attempt to move into and through them. All in all the AI is quicker to respond to contacts and less likely to become stuck. Getting the drop on the enemy is more important than ever! 3. CQB formations removed for this version. Their old functionality is better handled by the group memory feature. The old framework has been updated and will be re-implemented under a different guise at a future time

Indoor Movement Chance The latest version of LAMBS Danger fsm has sliding option to adjust the chance that units inside will move. This comes to play in two types based on context: (1) The AI may sometimes abandon buildings in order to assault exposed enemies. (2) The AI will actively reposition inside buildings to find better (closer) shooting positions. Increasing the movement slider will appropriately make the AI more willing to move within buildings. That it reads 0 to 1 is a bug to be fixed in the actual release. Spotting range This is a tough one. Our goal is to make a seamless enhancement capable of functioning off any and all types of terrains and environments. There are also in-engine considerations to be made. For reasons best known to Bohemia, the spotting range was reduced in previous versions. There are however ways to increase it. I'll offer four options. Mission design This is my preferred option. Good use of patrols, sentries and Quick Reaction Forces on Guard waypoints will mitigate the AI's limited vision. When I make missions, I make sure there are overlapping bubbles of protection and defense. Essentially, trip wire forces will call more powerful reinforcements. In combination with the LAMBS Reinforcement system (coming in 2.5.0) you get rather dynamic fire fights! CF_BAI While I do not use the mod myself, and cannot therefore give more than a healthy recommendation, many people do. The mod works by dynamically adjusting skills and (I believe) adding active spotting measures to units. The code is also available on gitHub and is rather clever indeed. Steam Workshop: LINK Runs By Us A lightweight and staggeringly effective mod to set up organic patrols and reinforcements. Updated by our very own Joko, it makes the AI actively send patrols to investigate heard gunshots. The mod is available on gitHub. Steam Workshop: LINK Spotlight Reveal Trigger System A recent entry into the field. The Spotlight system adds easy-to-use triggers by which the mission maker can add contextually salient positions that will reveal enemy forces at predefined accuracy and intervals. It is possible to do the same with editor placed triggers-- but the mod adds a easy to use interface to get the same effect. The mod is made by Ziehpopel (of Gruppe W I believe) and the code is available on their gitLab. Steam Workshop: LINK -k

I might be wrong, but I do not think it is possible to remove Action Menu entries by script. You'll need to make a small mod to distribute with your mission. -k

@drdetroit Could you add some detail as to what you are experiencing. Extended combat modes might be our doing, but orders from strange places is definitely beyond our scope! I test in single player scenarios quite frequently. Indeed, aside from a single report of a particular operation, the entire vanilla campaign has been reported fully stable. I would be grateful if you could check out some of our customisation options and see if that resolves your issue. Such as: - Disabling 'contact' state on player group - Try the 'disable group AI' button, which lets you to hot-toggle the AI on your own group. _very_ useful when moving quickly, or needing to reset your guys. 🙂 -k

Wow. Amazing content release. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: GM is what Arma3 should have been on release. -k

Hi everyone, I'll just slyly drop by with a bit of a sneak peek. The official release of LAMBS Danger.fsm version 2.5 draws close. But for those of you wanting an early look, we've dropped the current Release Candidate on the Steam workshop. Changelog at the same location. Our intention is to run the release candidate through its hoops for two weeks, before dropping an official release. This gives us time to fix any urgent errors that might pop up, and add improvements offered by feedback. Thank you everyone for your time 🙂 The team diwako / joko / nkenny Steam Workshop

Same experiment repeated. This time using LAMBS Danger.fsm version 2.5 Release Candidate - Notice that for no communication to be passed, the killing shot must be a headshot-- and it must be a killing shot and the only shot that hit the AI. - LAMBS Danger.fsm obviously checks that the communicating unit is alive. It is also both delayed and requires that the unit is not suppressed. -k

Here is a video which investigates the effects of suppressors (and stealthy behaviour) in ARMA3. While not strictly speaking a video which showcases LAMBS Danger.fsm, it nonetheless demonstrates concepts very relevant to the mod. AI behaviour is many layered. Features such as how easy it is for the AI to hear gunshots is greatly affected by how the weapon is configured. As has been stated many times, and for obvious reasons, it is not within the scope of LAMBS Danger.fsm to rewrite the weapon configs of all extant weapon mods. While NIArms unquestionably introduce high quality weapons to the game, the way they are configured to work in AI hands is not so straightforward. I investigate that very issue in this thread: The effect of weapon on AI Accuracy. More fundamentally there are information sharing features within Arma3 which, to my knowledge cannot be altered through scripting. For instance the speed which groups recognise that one of their member has fallen. Or the speed at which knowledge of an individual AI is transmitted to the entire group. For missions makers looking to create a specific experience, Bohemia has however created a powerful set of commands in setUnitTrait. Playing with these can greatly affect how easily the AI understands threats; that is the knowsAbout measure demonstrated in the video. -k

We're entering feature freeze today. So that is exciting. Regarding stealth missions Metal Gear Solid Arma is not. There is communication being passed between units that are not easily accessible by mod. As I have expounded upon in some of my AI-background videos, the only way to ensure perfect stealth is to score a head shot which instantly kills. But then, your issue is not any AI mod. It usually is ACE3. The reason for that is that ACE3 modifies the vanilla damage system-- in some cases preventing perfect instant-kills. As has been mentioned by others, suppressors and hearing settings are beyond the scope of this mod. That said, the existing system does work quite nicely in Arma3-- given perfect headshots. There is both interesting "scream"-events and hearing attenuation that is built into A3. While I'm sure the system could be refined, and indeed I've seen attempts of it, it probably isn't as bad as people make it out to be. For a true, solid snake, experience. You would need to lobotomize and rewire the AI. Not impossible, given what we know now. But certainly heavy lifting! -k

Milestone reached! Today we celebrate 100 000 subscribers on Steam Workshop. Wow! I’m both shocked and thrilled. We’d like to extend our thanks to our subscribers and the many communities that play with our little mod. To the people on our discord that bring suggestions, comments and questions, often highlighting areas where we should communicate better or features that need improvements. To our GitHub contributors that have added features, translations, fixes and functionality. Your wonderful feedback that has helped improve the AI immeasurably. We take great pride and joy in the creating and enhancing your Arma3 experience. You should all know that every time you are lying in a ditch hearing enemy bullets cut through the air around you. Every time an armoured vehicle opens up and reduces a building to rubble. Every time the enemy breaches a room and clears a building (with you in it!). Every time you are frantically giving first aid to your friends, while the enemy is inexorably manoeuvring on your position. In short, any time the chaos of battle descends. The team and I are cackling with evil glee. Thanks for playing Diwako, Jokoho, and nkenny

@drdetroit Very adroit. That's exactly how it is intended to run. When you really need the AI to go, setting formation to "FILE" or "DIAMOND/DELTA" helps. If you really need to get them going. Also turn off lambs danger (with the toggle). I tend not to use the toggle, but then again, I don't play long 1hr+ sessions with AI squad alone. Combat, Stealth and danger.fsm are not identical. I explore the difference in one of my YT videos. In short. It is possible for the danger.fsm to be running, without the unit being in danger or stealth mode. Danger or stealth mode does add cover-bounding movement however. Which we also touch on. (allowing longer bounds -- hence better cqb behaviour and speedier movement) @harveysimpson Our recommendation is to run it alone. That said, lambs danger fsm is highly configurable and runs seamlessly along with vanilla. Many communities report running it with other AI mods with few if any issues. My advice is to experiment a bit and use the combination that works for you 🙂 -k

Dear devs, ACE3 is great. Beautifully customisable and wonderfully open source. Incidentally, my community plays with tougher than default stamina settings and have no complaints. Perhaps we just carry less stuff. Thank you for all your work

Emphasis and underlines my own. My answers are derived from extensive testing and working with the danger FSM for the LAMBS Danger.fsm mod. @Gunter Severloh 1. AI knowledge is not perfect and can be off by many hundred meters if the conditions are right! A single sniper shot, even if not suppressed, will rarely give the AI perfect knowledge of the shooters position. This can be tested by playing with LAMBS Danger.fsm and switching on the various debug modes. In vanilla it is easily demonstrated by looking at where reinforcing units with a GUARD waypoint choose to move. If the shooter makes noise or otherwise exposes himself, the AI's knowledge will quickly become more accurate. 2. That is an intriguing idea. There is per now no way to consistently direct the AI's attention--- aside from shooting, suppressing and flanking! Which TOTALLY works! 3. The answer is both! The relevant danger.fsm data is "Explosion" and "Bullet Close". The former reports position of impact, the latter the shooters position. There is a system of weighting within the FSM which decides which response is prioritised. It is not entirely clear by which process these individual events are triggered. Bullet close does seem to require some previous knowledge of the shooter, but it is not consistently the case that a single shooting event causes both and explosion and a "bullet close" (assuming the bullet whizzes past the listener). It gets more complicated. If a shooting event happens nearby-- another event is triggered "Fire" which reports the shooters location. Interestingly, the shooter need not be an enemy. Arma3 AI is pretty good. Whats lacking is some pathfinding, but more importantly, feedback of the AI's current state. -k

It isn't an issue, it is a feature. The idea being your profile is your avatar. The equipment carried is secondary. It makes a lot of sense in multiplayer 😉 -k

@TesACC As a leader of a community of that size, I think that your analysis of the problem is spot on, even as I don't agree with your conclusion. It is hard, if not impossible to justify adding GM and CSLA to our mod repository for the reasons you outlined. For all practical intents and purposes CUP and RHS offer adequate, comparable or superior assets. Assets which are inherently compatible with existing Arma3 universe. I think the underlying problem is this: Global Mobilisation is everything Arma3 should have been on release: specific in scope and having an inherently interesting scenario/setting. The cognitive dissonance arises because GM is fundamentally and thematically not compatible with Arma3. Example: If a 7.62 from a GM rifle performs radically different from vanilla, RHS or CUP weapons it is incompatible. If the vehicles added in GM do not fit out-of-the-box into the default A3 sandbox, they are incompatible. All of this translates into a confused message. Unfortunately, I don't think there is an easy solution. I will continue to buy and support Bohemia products, but I don't expect to see massive use of neither GM nor CSLA anytime in the future. -k

To my knowledge there is no simple way to check individually-- beyond gradually adding/removing mods from the load order and manually checking performance. Performance is many things. Adding mods with a large number of assets will increase load time. Certain mods may have high quality or poorly optimised models (which means placing many of them on screen simultaneously is taxing for lower end systems). If you are using some sort of mission framework for your common scenarios, check these for bugs or script loops. Why don't you post a list of mods you are currently using?

@sammael A quick fix is to do what redarmy suggests-- setting the group to <group> enableAttack false; Generally when I set up missions where I need the AI to remain static, I either use the garrison module or manually place AI with 'this disableAI "PATH";' set up. @redarmy It is funny you should mention it. EnableAttacks and the attack feature in itself is something we've been experimenting with quite a bit. I was considering making a video on the topic, but real life is real life. For the next release we remain committed to a seamless integration, but you will see enableAttack disabled at phased intervals or when specific tactical actions are made. This does increase cohesion quite a bit. The reason why not to simply disable it is because sometimes, sometimes it actually works really well. The attacking state is good at finding positions to engage from, and the sending out of troops is a nice way making the AI scout. It doesn't work so well for CQB-- hence, our tweaks. 🙂 @terox There are many ways to disable the AI. This ranges from the individual FSM and the group level "tactics". You can check our wiki (or my youtube channel) for more information, it is possible to do so by variable or checking an eden editor box or by Zeus interface. In short: <unit> setVariable ["lambs_danger_disableAI", true]; will disable the AI on an individual level. <group> setVariable ["lambs_danger_disableGroupAI", true]; will disable group level actions. Note that the individual actions trigger the group actions. Hence, if you wish to disable the AI for a spawned group-- do so on the individuals. -k

@redarmy Artillery is due a rewrite. There have been been some reports of errors, though these have not been easy to debug. @Synchronized Ownership of vehicles is retained for some time. So if a unit leaves a vehicle, but that vehicle is still owned by that side. It will register as a low priority target for enemy forces. As Diwako states, adding a module to intelligently destroy potential enemy assets would be a massively invasive feature. Not to mention, it would demand a contextually intelligent AI. :) Update Progress is going well. 2.5 is very much in a playable state. It is based on an entirely new FSM and newfangled tactics engine. Provided we're happy with the performance, I hope to see a release before Christmas. -k

Time to follow this thread a little closer again. First of all I would like to say thanks to everyone for the kind words. LAMBS Danger.fsm crossed the 50000 Steam Subscribers threshold a little while back. The team and I are happy and excited to see and hear about the games you play. We will be bringing out version 2.5 quite soonish. In fact, for those of that snoop our gitHub, will have seen quite a bit of activity recently. Version 2.5 will bring with it the much anticipated FSM rework and a considerable reorganisation and renaming of internal functions. The end result is a faster, more deadly AI; for developers, a streamlined and consistent environment. Two interesting features that will be coming with the next version are reworked group behaviours and a shared memory within the group. The former is already familiar. AI Groups will perform tactical manoeuvres, such as flanking or collective suppressive fire. With the next version, that feature has been updated, tightened and enhanced. The different tactical states are now more apparent and potent. You'll see group deliver area fire on known and expected locations and they will assault buildings with all the more rigor and aggression. Group actions are therefore much more integral to the AI's performance in a combat environment. Likewise the intelligence or evaluative process for group actions has been improved. There is also more consistency in AI using flares or manning static weapons. As to the former, a group now has a shared memory or consciousness of nearby enemies. When an AI soldier is in an assessment state, he will seek out enemies known to the group, but not directly threatening him. In other words, you will see the AI converge on known enemies or deliver sympathetic, prophylactic, suppressive fire when the enemy is not immediately within reach. The same system is used to make the AI more capable of clearing through buildings when enemies are suspected. Fun, dangerous, stuff. Thank you for playing :) Ken

I speak from personal experience. The nametags are fantastic. :) -k

Cool stuff! Literally. -k

@mickeymen Have you checked the gitHub wiki? https://github.com/nk3nny/LambsDanger/wiki/Variables-and-functions ---- Here is the first of a three part series that covers the design philosophy of LAMBS Danger and how the module system works. Next video will consider Zeus and a more in depth look at the various modules. -k

LAMBS Danger.fsm affects no weapon settings. With that said, the shared information may have other emergent properties. If anything the tendency of infantry to move and shoot in cqb may cause decreased accuracy. -k

@LSValmont <unit> setVariable ["lambs_danger_disableAI", true]; -k

LAMBS Danger fsm New release: Current version 2.4.4 *HOTFIX* Changelog Added context_menu actions support to the Zeus Enhanced mod Added configurable setting for ‘combat mode’ sharing distance Added patrol option to taskGarrison and taskCamp (default is disabled) Improved taskAssault (more reliable) Improved taskRush with dynamic cycle times Fixed random suppressive fire in taskCQB and improved house selection routines Fixed vehicles suppressing through terrain and high flying aircraft Fixed units will more reliable man static weapons in taskGarrison and taskCamp Fixed units will more reliably deploy static weapons from modded content Fixed units with LAMBS AI disabled will no longer be forced into combat mode by information sharing Fixed artillery registration issue Fixed in Zeus, moduleCQB and moduleAssault would always delete the logic even when asked not to. Fixed various issues in Eden and Zeus modules This version fixes and improves many small aspects of the mod related to task modules and group level behaviour. For players using the Zeus Enhanced (ZEN) mod, we’ve also connected the modules to the contextual menu for ease of use. The next move from the team will be an restructure of the naming scheme of many of the functions. As LAMBS Danger has proceeded the complexity of the project has increased. We are experimenting with future features. among these are: enhancements to artillery, a much requested reinforcement system, adding a post-combat AI, a dynamic close air support engine, and various other pieces. As always we are committed to keeping the mod from overriding mission makers intentions and hence creating a seamless improvement to the game. From the team diwako / joko / nkenny