Pillar_of_fire

Thanks SC

I'd like to place AI soldiers and tell them to open fire at an approximate range, but remain *in cover* and concealment both before and after opening fire. My experience so far is that they are standing while defending a location, and not attempting to use cover. Also, after they open fire, they begin to run around and maneuver. I want them to get into good concealment & cover at "spawn in" and remain there, even after they start shooting. Thanks

I would like to make all the soldiers in my user-made mission have a split experience level/accuracy level. I want them to be "1" for experience & ability but I want their shooting ability to be something like ".6" I can edit the settings file so that this split is set for the campaign (and what other mission types, I do not know). But in user missions I see that this is set when one creates a unit, and there aren't two sliders so I believe the accuracy and the experience are fixed together as the same value.

Done! However, your 2551 issue pertains to everyone in the squad, not just the group leader. (In fact, even if the group leader stays behind for covering fire.)

No... if your enemy is firing at you from about 200m with a barren valley between the two of you, the last thing you do is send men rushing down hill straight at the enemy. This is the age of assault rifles and machine guns, not muskets and bayonets. Another question now: I have no idea how to manually set the values for skill vs precision in my own scenarios. When I place a unit they start with some values in their slider, but the difficulty setting is not set until the player loads the scenario. So the values are being set before the difficulty setting -- unless it overwrites the values for the troops given by the scenario editor, I don't know how to make custom values in my own missions. How does that work?

Excellent, this is good news. Thanks.

Is AI spotting ability inseparable from their aiming skill?

If I could get them to grab cover on a lip or behind an obstruction, and do "pop up" shoot "get down" and reload until ammo expiration, that would be enough for me. But I can't get them to do anything like that. I have this problem where they start rushing my positions (at least one guy at a time) and that always goes very badly for them. Thanks for the info regarding the AI skill. Does that mean that AI *spotting* is inseparable from their aiming skills? It's my understanding that the difficulty setting for the AI affects their aim, which I find to be a bit over-accurate at higher settings. Thanks mates.

I've noticed the AI (incl. squad mates) is pretty good now in Arma 2 at taking up covered positions when bounding and I'm familiar with how the squad controls work, including "stance" & behaviour SOP, and fire/engagement rules. What I don't get is why the enemy AI always rushes into frontal attacks over relatively open ground after commencing a firefight. With my own squad mates I can force them to stay in formation and form a base of fire over a ridge or anything they can use to minimize their profile. With the enemy AI, they typically first drop to the ground on contact and then start sending men running forward right at my positions. I'm usually unloading on their position with a full squad from ~200m away at that point, so this doesn't go over well for the enemy. If they'd just find microterrain - small dips in elevation, or use micro-ridgelines and so on... they'd do a LOT better in a firefight. I'm stumped as to how to get them to do this. Another issue I can't figure out is the spotting. I've seen so many situations where enemy and friendlies are in clear LOS of each other, with entire squads *standing* fully upright... and they will never see each other. I usually have to report the contact or nobody else will. Overall great game, I'm happy with it... I just feel like if infantry did more "hunker down" type engagements and dished it out instead of rushing all the time, it would be both more realistic and make for more challenging and lasting firefights. It would also be nice to actually need stuff like grenade launchers, RPGs, mortars etc... instead I can solve everything with a machine gun. :) Thanks for listening. Let me know if I'm missing something.