nkenny

Isn't it just straight under "ACE_MainActions" ? Not on my PC at the moment, so can't check, but this LINK, does seem to suggest it -k

LAMBS Danger.fsm New release: Current version 1.4 As advertised the latest version was released on Steam Workshop early this morning. I delayed updating this thread in case any urgent hotfixes proved necessary. The big change in the new version is a fully rewritten FSM and a group leader--group action functionality. The changes have been described in a post earlier in the thread. Changelog - Rewritten FSM - Added group Actions: Rally, Hide, Manoeuvre, check buildings. - Added 'dangerMode', 'dangerFormation', and 'dangerCode' group variables - Added utilising available static weapons - Added vehicle danger avoidance routines - Added 'first shot' Reaction state for infantry - Added tactical dismounts and investigation state for vehicles - Added more state visualisation through gestures - Improved infantry panic state -- cleaner implementation - Improved vehicle rotation routines - Improved CQC combat mode in DELTA and FILE formations - Improved Vehicle and infantry suppression - Improved dynamic artillery module - Improved debug feedback - Improved ACE3 support - Minor fixes to danger Waypoints - Minor improvements to civilian danger.fsm - Minor performance enhancements to core scripts Special thanks This version would not have been possible without discussions, bug and feature testing, suggestions and technical expertise. I would like to extend particular thanks to: - Nopryl of Norway, for testing and feedback - Alex2k, for having a devious mind in regards to AI scenario design - Diwako, for beating my head with CBA and good advice - AnAngrySalad of UKSF, for consultation on realism and practical implementation* - The kind words and suggestions from commentators at Steam Workshop and YouTube. Next releases There is a small list of tweaks and performance enhancements for a version 1.41. I will very happily take suggestions or bug reports. After the release of 1.41 the mod will move in a direction to support extended CBA functionality. I have been fortunate in being approached by some very experienced developers that have provided very succinct suggestions and feedback. Some of these changes will make their way into 1.41 🙂 Thank you for reading, Ken LINKS Steam Workshop GitHub -- *Every time you are hit by dynamic artillery you should curse his name.

@froggyluv It did. That comment is aimed some other unknown issue. @rainbow47 That is correct. Though it just struck me that this will not be the case for player led groups. That would need some additional interface. Hmm edit: Testing has shown that player led groups set to FILE or DIAMOND (Sometimes called DELTA) trigger the advanced CQC mode. If they are slow to initiate it, it can help to order one or more units to move (somewhere, anywhere). One limitation is that the units will take charge of their own destinies and continuously clear buildings around the player until satisfied. I may look into adding additional interface in the future, though this is strictly speaking outside the scope of the mod.

@beagle23 Good question. In truth, I am just relying on vanilla group interaction. In vanilla, killing leaders creates delays in calling of attack commands and so on. If a group leader dies next to a subordinate-- transfer of leadership is nearly instantaneous. There is no artificial inflation of command change, only the Group Actions outlined in my previous post are affected by suppression. Core features of the danger.fsm remain effective as these are individual in nature. In short: I wouldn't worry unless it proves a problem in larger scale testing. Good theory-crafting however! -k

Barring any critical bugs Version 1.4 is ready and set to be released on Sunday. Prefacing the release I thought I would write a couple of paragraphs detailing the application and thinking behind the implementation. Introducing Group variables Version 1.4 begins with a full rewrite of the FSM and a streamlining of the unit variables. This is done to facilitate a group intelligence. The group leader will periodically assess known threats and may implement group responses. The first group response is Reacting to contact. The initial shock of combat makes the unit drop down and seek cover (indoor if possible). When the group leader has a free moment-- he will rally troops and communicate the groups situation to allied elements. From this point on the group leader will periodically, around every 60 seconds, assess the situation and seek to match capability to enemies. Killing or suppressing group leaders greatly diminishes the ability of the group to properly rally and respond. The groups behaviour and memory nexus is handled in the local group variable DangerMode. It consists of a series of arrays which contain information about the groups current threats and situation. Specifically the break down is: 0, Threat type, a list of numbers which indicate priority and triggered events. [ARRAY] 1, location of threat, a list of objects or positions which have triggered tactical events. [ARRAY] 2, Reaction status, a true-false value which indicates if the group has seen combat. [BOOL] 3, Time out, a time out for when reaction status needs to reset (6 minutes without combat) and the cycle of leadership assessments. [NUMBER] Two additional group variables are checked. DangerFormation and DangerCode. These are by default blank, but can be used by mission makers to create pseudo-eventhandlers which are triggered when a group leader calls the first Reaction to contact. CBA and ACE3 developers take note! The FSM is an excellent place to add triggers for more information like this. The dangerFormation is an easy way to trigger formation change on first contact. Perhaps changing to a LINE formation to better face the enemy, or a DIAMOND, to trigger more aggressive CQB checking of every building. Unsurprisingly, dangerCode, runs code on the first contact. This can be used in any myriad of scripted situations, limited only by the mission makers creativity. Full example wrapped within Spoiler tag. Group actions As noted above, group leaders can call tactical responses to certain events. I will give a brief description of these here. There are currently FIVE types added, these are listed in priority (smaller number adds greater priority). These are all maintained as functions to make them easy to work with and modify. Reaction to contact, priority 1 Triggered by first contact. Response is : Rallies troops and communicates threat to nearby teams Hide, priority 2 Triggered by, facing air or tracked threats. Response is: Troops without effective weapons seek cover inside buildings Manoeuvre, priority 3 Triggered by, enemy infantry is in a position below own position. Response is: Half the group suppress target location while the rest rush quickly towards an overwatch position. (BIS_fnc_findOverwatch) Check houses, priority 5 Triggered by, enemy infantry is hiding in nearby buildings. Response is: unit will search through nearby buildings Call Artillery, priority 6 Triggered by, artillery available and enemy is beyond 300 meters. Response is: call artillery. Artillery module has been rewritten since last video and really deserves its own post. Future: Clever readers may have noticed the gap between 3 and 5. This is because this system is meant to be easy to expand and modify. It strikes me that at the time of writing it is not possible to disable group actions, I may add a variable to that effect in version 1.41. This is also where responses for factions and units which have particular needs. These will be optional enhancements configured by the mission maker. Examples that I might add in the future: - Untrained militia AI will disregard cover and concealment to simply rush the enemy position. - Reconnaissance troops AI will avoid being engaged at all costs. Preferring to withdraw and hide. - Insurgents AI will hide weapons, vests and backpacks in nearby buildings and pose as civilians when enemy forces come too close. FSM design Wrapped in spoiler tag to save space. I will end this post with a video of tracked vehicle behaviour in version 1.4. Thank you for reading. Ken --- ~ Danger.fsm Tracked vehicle behaviour

@Mohsin666 Yes, that is my understanding. These other mods work on a different tactical scales. 🙂 edit: Here is a video showing off some of the core behaviours of the FSM. My voice sometimes drowns out a bit, but it is factual and and shows the decision making progress

@mikey74 That's not good! The panic script is updated in the next version. Are you using ACE variables by any chance? My goal is full support with only _optional_ variables to extend functionality. -k

Glad you got it working. For future reference, and others googling this, here is a config example of tanks with various textures and camo-nets. I know I have found threads like this infinitely useful in the past. :) https://github.com/nk3nny/LambsMods/tree/master/tank -k

So the next update is around 99% finished. The final percent being concerned with tweaking timing variables and settings to a vision of gameplay. Some technical issues combined with a lack of time meant that the larger scale testing I had meant to do will be delayed until the weekend. Full public release is approaching soon.tm @beagle23 @froggyluv Thank you for your analysis. Indeed, I quite agree with many of the considerations you put forth. I hope to enhance the existing features to create better flowing gameplay-- though my task is not to explicitly make the AI better. The goal is to make the AI more interesting and capable. Interesting in that the AI will communicate, through gestures and stance, more clearly what state the AI is in. More capable in that the AI will have an expanded tactical repertoire. The mod is therefore aimed more towards COOP communities and single players than it is warfare players. (An AI suitable for strategic play like that would require different design I think!). I intend to make a few videos where I showcase some of the new features and responses and put these in the perspective of the vanilla AI. Onwards to timings and micro-AI. Lets first point out that the AI is a complicated beast. Especially because the behaviour of the AI is spread across so many places. Some of which are not immediately accessible. Those that are accessible include: - Weapon configurations* - Danger.fsm - Formation.fsm (which is actually a config file!) The timing perspective I have done some work with. When the AI enters close combat you will see much faster cycles with the new AI. The vanilla AI will on a shooting event stop and remain static either until the target is dead or 4 to 8 seconds has passed. This is one reason why the AI sometimes will stop in the middle of crossing the street. A behaviour which is also curtailed. in the new FSM-- not by design, but a happy incidence. The new FSM will trigger a significantly faster, updating targeting and movement every 1 to 4 seconds in CQB and at longer ranges the AI will only stop 1 out of 3 times. Creating a significantly more dynamic AI. In regards to micro-AI: that is exploiting micro-terrain and preconfigured cover positions. This level of behaviour is actually managed in the formation.fsm. The functions called are somewhat arcane (to say the least!), but I am exploring various enhancements. Try my ORK AI to see an AI with the micro-AI removed. For now I am still exploring options. I would like to modify the formation.fsm, but I've run into some questions. 1) Currently the formation.fsm is actually a config file. Is this done for performance reasons? 2) Whenever I make my own formation.fsm I loose the micro-terrain interaction. I think it is, sometimes quite good and I am not willing to sacrifice it. If I can call the existing functions (or better yet, modify them!) I would like to explore various options here. 3) Pathfinding. I wonder if it is possible to make improvements or additions to pathfinding engines. This would probably, definitely be beyond my coding skills, but would be a good start for higher order enhancements.

Livonia for DayZ would be a great move. The Arma3 community has already benefited tremendously from the European-styled assets freely added to the core game. -k

Colour me super excited. Tucano is a perfect addition to Arma3. Getting it released within the RHS support milieu is all the better. :) -k

@beagle23 Feedback is very welcome. The stated design goal for the Danger.fsm mod is twofold: (1) Make buildings part of the AI's tactical landscape. (2) Add elements of feedback and which creates more clearly defined AI states. Principally, I want to explore options which will fit within the scope of FSM level modifications. Actual examples of this are things such as: Infantry clearing buildings and turreted, tracked, vehicles dismantling and reducing buildings garrisoned by enemies, and more clearly recognizable responses to enemy fire. As mentioned in the original post, the mod explicitly aims to settle tactical and not strategic concerns. It is no replacement for waypoints and clever mission design.

@domokun Yes and no. I decided against heavily involving the various skill settings for a couple of reasons. (1) It makes the initial implementation and proofs of concept easier to achieve. (2) I find that the skill settings are erratically configured in Arma3. The four grades of soldier you've outlined would be superbly useful-- but these do not correspond with any consistently presented values. (3) Finally, it is my experience from my work on AI accuracy (LINK) that communities configure their AI (both server and on a mission basis) in sometimes drastically different ways. Add my own mixture to this would do anything but offer standardization. There is also another concern. On a more fundamental level the delays and chances I introduce to the danger.fsm are arbitrary. While products of many, many repeated test runs and internal game play concerns and finally with commentary and advice from real world experience, the numbers I add are inventions. Stacking arbitrary numbers on top of other arbitrary numbers may give the appearance of simulation-iz-teh-realz-2k, while in reality being grounded on nothing, and potentially clouding the actual gameplay effect. For these reasons I have avoided tying skill settings too closely to the danger.fsm. That accounts for the No of the answer. The Yes comes now. All of this said: The AI is very much affected by skill settings. Vanilla AI accuracy, information gathering, speed of reaction and suppression resistance is greatly enhanced by skill (LINK). Many of these are tied directly to the danger.fsm by virtue of being vanilla expressions of AI behaviour. There are two particular settings, which are consistent, which I have linked some of the fundamental new features to. One of these is Suppression (getSuppression, setSuppression). The other is soldier Rank. Soldier rank will directly tie into the distance which information is propagated and will conceivably be expanded to cover other aspects of supporting fire. A rather lengthy answer to a reasonable suggestion. hashtag philosopher. Kind regards, Ken

@froggyluv In testing the feature worked on implementation, perhaps things have shifted as features have been added and the complexity of the battle space has increased. That said it makes for a good case study of how the next iteration of the mod handles this feature. In practice both versions utilize the same function that is called on reacting to enemy contact and certain panic states: lambs_danger_fnc_hideInside. This function creates makes an imperative to either hide inside nearby buildings or try to find cover in a direction away from the threat. Hiding inside buildings is given a priority movement order, while "hiding in bushes" is lower on the food chain-- which may be overruled by squad leader commands or certain waypoints. Only foot infantry are affected. In the currently released version this behavior is purely reactive, and purely individual. Soldiers will enter a hiding state if greatly outnumbered or facing tanks and airplanes, without the weapons to deal with them. At the moment the function only registers the current threat-- which does not necessarily pick out the most dangerous one. Future versions may improve this. As for the next version: There are three new additions: (1) The Coward state is checked in a more broad set of events (thus may trigger more reliably). (2) If triggered, it will feed a danger state to the groups decision matrix-- which will be evaluated by the squad leader on his next free cycle. This may in turn trigger a group wide hiding response. (3) Soldiers in a cowardly mode will also suffer added suppression levels, which in turn reduces accuracy and reaction times. Tank and tank like vehicles therefore have a suppressing effect on enemy infantry. -k

@rainbow47 Yes. However one must note that Combat mode is not identical with being in a "danger state". Hence your unit may be in Stealth-mode and at a "danger state" at the same time. The danger.fsm triggers on any dangerous impetuous, such as bullets, explosions or simply spotting enemies. It does not run when the unit is set to Combat (sometimes called Danger)-mode. @beagle23 I will look into it at a later stage of development. I agree. It would be super useful. For now, if your Zeus interface has some sort of execution line interface (most do!)-- then it is possible to run the scripts directly as demonstrated above. :) Kind regards, Ken

@froggyluv Yes! Actually that behaviour is already part of the current Danger.fsm. The same when facing dangerous air assets. The next iteration will move it from an individual to a group concern. -k

@Explodie Thank you for the report. I will look into it. You should require no mods. @chrisb Not familiar with the zorllia scripts, I'm afraid. Essentially I agree. Best garrison scripts balance having enemies stand still (to be shot) and having them creating dynamic situations. @rainbow47 Unfortunately that is currently outside the scope of the mod. --- Current status A the moment I am about 70% done with the rewrite of the FSM. First step is to reincorporate all existing features and expanding and improving them, as well as increasing ease of maintenance. The next version already features increased responsiveness in CQB, refined panic and reaction functions, and a greatly improved suppression module. New features are focused along two lines; (1) improvements to armoured vehicles (evading enemy fire and increased aggression) and (2) the basis of an AI leader decision maker. The second feature could do with some explanation. When the squad enters combat, each soldier works as a sensor. Certain impulses are added to the groups pool of information.. From this the group leader will periodically make assessments and set forth group wide responses. This adds extra incentive to target leaders early and adds depth to infantry tactics and adds predictable stages to AI decision making. These responses will never override existing waypoints, nor change core AI settings. Examples are things such as: Calling artillery, checking nearby buildings, or hiding in the presence of tanks or helicopters. The exact nature and conditions which will trigger these responses are currently under development. Future Cautiously, I will propose that the next version should be ready by Wednesday. This is of course subject to the whims of real life and arma. The release plan looks something like this: 1. New version - Release rewritten FSMs 2. Release WP scripts standalone 3. Mid version - Refine and fix bugs of new FSMs 4. Move to CBA, with all benefits added, and move to an ACE3 code standard* 5. Release legacy version without CBA requirement -k

@Tankbuster Unless I have gravely misunderstood something, that isn't possible at the current time. I would be very happy for any directions to set it up. I plan to release these scripts as standalone. None of them require any mods. It is however possible to call the scripts yourself, with one point of awkwardness-- to tweak the default zone you will need to also attach a waypoint with the completion radius you prefer. The scripts all follow the same pattern: Arguments: - Unit [Group or Object] - Position [Array] Functions: - lambs_dangerWP_fnc_taskAttack, creates three Seek and Destroy waypoints with orders to search buildings (Default range is 25m) - lambs_dangerWP_fnc_taskCQB, searches all building positions within a range (default is 50m) - lambs_dangerWP_fnc_taskCreep, cautiously stalks any player unit within AoE (Default is 500m) - lambs_dangerWP_fnc_taskGarrison, Garrisons building and mans static weapons. (Default is 50m) - lambs_dangerWP_fnc_taskHunt, Hunts in a patrol like fashion player units within AoE (Default is 500m) - lambs_dangerWP_fnc_taskPatrol, Creates a random patrol within range (Default is 200m) - lambs_dangerWP_fnc_taskRush, Madly rushes towards any playable units with AoE (Default is 500m) Example: [Officer1,getpos Officer1] call lambs_dangerWP_fnc_taskGarrison; [group rushers,getpos player] spawn lambs_dangerWP_fnc_taskRush; NB: The Rush, Creep, Hunt and CQB functions require that you spawn rather than call. Cheers. -k --- edit: A video I made demonstrating some of the waypoints in use: Creep, Hunt and Rush

@MrStregatto Thats a fantastic suggestion. Hadn't thought about it. Currently it is not possible. @Pierrive Not unless you recompile the mod for your own use. 🙂 -k

Fantastic

edit: Correct video link for TaskCQB and taskGarrison scripts. ~ Demonstrates how the new waypoint system works and the TaskCQB and TaskGarrison scripts (which will be released standalone)

@Dallas Medina It depends on the circumstances. The meeting with combat may make the AI drop prone or seek cover. They should return to their waypoints however. -k

Thanks for the kind words everyone. @ziegler62 Unfortunately as @Tankbuster says, it is to my knowledge impossible. I will however be releasing some standalone AI scripts in the near future. @AirShark That is a interesting prospect! Certainly worth investigating further. Is there perhaps a simple AI hearing range parameter? It would in that case be trivial to tweak while the danger.fsm is active. @rainbow47 The mod only affects AI whom are currently in combat mode. Any changes to Stealth mode are added only because the behaviours are so related. --- A new version of LAMBS Danger.fsm has been released. Current version is 1.31 - Added scripted Waypoints to force various AI behaviour: Patrols, Garrison, Check buildings, Clear buildings (CQB), Rush, Stalk/creep, and Long ranged Hunt - Added Dynamic Artillery system - Improved vehicle suppression system - Improved reaction to hits, explosions and bullets passing nearby - Improved low level information sharing between groups - Misc. performance enhancements While the danger.fsm is purely reactive in nature. There have been requests for ways to trigger more aggressive behaviours. This release handles some of that. The big thing is of course the newly added Waypoints. These work in a simple manner, simply assign them to the group in question and enjoy the show. The waypoint completion radius determines the area within which a unit will perform its waypoint. Of special note are the Rush, Creep and Hunt-- these are different ways of setting up aggressive AI which will hunt down players, ranging from fast to slower and more passive. The dynamic artillery system adds the option of AI calling for fire support. The operation is simple. Place the artillery in eden and add the new Register Artillery waypoint. Now any unit from that faction can call on that artillery unit if certain parameters are met. Enemy forces must be at a certain distance. The AI must have time to communicate. Must know about enemy location. And must remain alive during the barrage. There are time delays for both acquiring targets and reloading (becoming ready to support). Artillery must be registered through the waypoint (or directly added to the array) in order to function in this manner. Initial mapping of the new FSM is underway. This update includes increased responsiveness to the initial barrage of enemy fire. Some fruitful discussion with AnAngrySalad of the Arma group UKSF, has brought iwth it additional perspectives which will aim to increase the realism and immersion of upcoming releases. --- To demonstrate the use of the mod I have created some additional videos: ~ Demonstrates Improvements to AI reaction to fire.

Spectrum device would also be super useful for a whole range of scripted mission applications too. -k

Confirmed. I'm an idiot. Running 194.xxxxxx. For reasons of personal idiocy I only checked the six last digits when looking at the version number. -k