Make Love Not War

This is a pretty good list. Thanks, Dave. Totally agreed. Although it could just be my feverish imagination, but I think there might already be some suppression effects in the game. Still, it should really be a major game mechanic not an afterthought. Hand-in-hand with suppression, I'd also like to see a realistic morale system. Most firefights are not won because one side has been wiped out to the man, but rather because a side loses its willingness to continue the fight and withdraws or surrenders (if those options are available). Suppression would play a major role in such a morale system. I envision game mechanics, for instance, whereby a force that can bring superior (and accurate) firepower to bear upon enemy units would prevail not necessarily because they are able to inflict casualties upon the enemy, but rather because the enemy AI realizes that to continue the fight will only lead to their slaughter. Naturally, these ideas need a lot more discussion and general hashing out, but I'll leave it at that for now (this response is already TL;DR). In any case, I think one can get the gist of where I'd like to see BIS go with these sorts of game mechanics. Actually, as of the 1.59 patch, the AI does this to a large degree (if I'm corectly understanding what you're suggesting), The problem is that the implementation ATM isn't very good, because in looking for cover within this given radius, the AI ignores tactical spacing and will often stack up on the same pieces of cover. So, what we're getting is a lot of cringe-worthy clusterfucking rather than formations that make tactical sense. I'm a bit scared of adding things to an already cluttered UI (the squad command UI is in need of some streamlining, IMO), but, yes, I have to agree on this one. It can be pretty important at times. Yes! As far as I can tell, there really is no overall AI "commander" or even AI unit leaders that make decisions on squad or global levels. At the very least, the AI need to start operating on the intra-squad level as a cohesive unit or team. Manuevers, such as flanking, should be executed in a systemic and logical fashion, not single soldiers running around in an ad-hoc manner willy-nilly. Of course, for there to be an overall AI commander, first we'd need an AI that can examine the battlefield and assess the terrain from a tactical viewpoint. That's probably a bit of a programming project, but not something that couldn't be done, IMO. Yeah, the AI is still completely clueless inside buildings and CQB in general. It'd another huge undertaking to fix this, but some work really needs to be done in this area. Not a hard thing to code. One could probably even script it without too much hassle. I always put my squads into "stay crouched" or "keep low" when going into "danger" mode, but, yes, having the AI automatically do this would be nice. Sure. But, give the players an option to disable all or parts of the AI chat. Especailly in MP, AI chatter is unnecessary as real players already chatter enough as is.:D BIS (or whomever it may concern) take a look at the DSAI mod, as it does extra chatter (for American units) pretty well, IMHO. Yup, the driving still needs work. AI drivers constantly over-running intersections is especially annoying and shouldn't be too hard of a fix. That said, IMO, the infantry pathfinding in general is pretty well done everything considering. Yeah, shouldn't every formation have a rear security element, for instance? Well, we do have the 'watch direction' command somewhere in the squad menu. But, without scripting I don't think there is an easy way to set formation direction, which would be nice to have. Not quite sure which of these two you're talking about here. In any case, I wouldn't want this kind of feature implemented in a way that leads to fumbling around with setting the AI direction when all you really need is for your SAW gunner to get to that FRICKIN' corner NOW so that he can fire down that street. Maybe, have 'spacebar' and then 'mouseclick' as a "move to" order as is now, but include the option to 'ctrl-mouseclick' which would allow the player to adjust the AI formation direction by dragging the mouse (similar to the construction menu)? Having said all this, I'd like to point out that the current Arma AI is pretty amazing when compared to anything else out there. One has to take into consideration that this game's AI has to operate in a massive sandbox environment and in a multitude of various combat scenarios. Not an easy thing to code. So, many kudos to BIS for the AI we do have. TL;DR: Yeah, what Dave said.

Just wanted to add my 'vote' to this issue: I'd love to see BIS further improvie the AI for A3.

Don't think BIS needds to go overboard on the gore, but considering this is supposed to be a realistic, military simulation game, we really should be seeing things like dismemberment. I mean, what do you think happens when somebody gets hit by an IFV auto-cannon? One could argue that over-sanitizing the experience not only hurts immersion, but it also mis-represents and glosses over some of the consequences of war. That may be fine for a Hollywood show like the A-team, but if you're going to go the authentic and realistic route don't you have some responsibility to portray the ugly side of things as well?

Yes, please. Best Arma3 suggestion so far. sbsmac hits the nail on the head: