Firefight Dynamics in ArmA 3

[Whirly]

I know when I play, sonic snaps don't effect my ai, so either I am suffering from a bad rig... or your last video was showing the ai reacting to the gunshot, not the sonic crack.

Yes you are right mate the AI was reacting to the gunshot. I always presumed that my AI were reacting to the bullets sonic signature but after thoroughly testing this again yesterday with silenced weapons I found that the AI would only react if rounds were impacting nearby them.

I have all these setting at 1. do you find that setting their skill to .9 instead of 1 makes them perform better? I may give this a try tonight.

In terms of consistancy I feel that .9 is slightly better than 1. but I wouldn't recommend going any lower than .9

[NoRailgunner]

Imo "0" and "1" (or ultraAI) are just good for testing AI. It doesn't make sense to set them all on the highest possible settings just to watch them killing the enemy with the first shot/burst over a certain distance. Only exception could be if the player plays A2OA with an old/slow cpu and tries to "counter" this with highest AI setup. Of course BIS could provide some good + useful presets but that would mean they have to play/tweak the game on their own, which also means less time to develop + make all the things.

[Whirly]

Imo "0" and "1" (or ultraAI) are just good for testing AI. It doesn't make sense to set them all on the highest possible settings just to watch them killing the enemy with the first shot/burst over a certain distance.

I think that only applies for the precision settings, as can be seen in some of the videos I posted 0.9 skill level still allows for lengthy firefights.

[froggyluv]

I thought Precision was disabled

[-Coulum-]

I thought Precision was disabled

Thats what I heard as well but I haven't actually fool around with it. I just have it set to one and jool around with asr ai settings.

Imo "0" and "1" (or ultraAI) are just good for testing AI. It doesn't make sense to set them all on the highest possible settings just to watch them killing the enemy with the first shot/burst over a certain distance.

But I find that the ai with the highest possible accuracy still isn't as good a shooter as a player. I mean give an ai a sniper rifle and even with full precision accuracy whatever he still fails at shooting anything over 450 metres. One of the problems with arma is that the ai seem to be too accurate with shitty guns but not accurate enough with good guns/optics. I think it may be worth it to make ai skills become better or worse depending not only on their class but also on their weapons.
Ie.
give an ai an ak and his accuracy decreases and his rate of fire increases due to the crappy sights and the way the weapon was designed to be used.
give an ai a sniper rifle and his spot distance increases due to the optics, accuracy increases also due to optics, and spot time decreases due to the limited fov.
of course some of these skills could not be permanetly placed because if a sniper isn't looking through his scope his spot time distance accuracy etc wouldn't be effected. It would only apply when the ai look through its sights - which I don't believe happens... that would have to be fixed some how.
Anyways what do you guys think of weapons haveing an effect on ai skills? I think this could also help firefights become more realistic and longer without making the ai sharpshooters totally useless.

[Whirly]

I think it may be worth it to make ai skills become better or worse depending not only on their class but also on their weapons.

That is a good idea.

[Hoak]

Good points. I totally agree. Right now it is to easy to quickly pop out of cover line up you sights and shoot off very accurate rounds. We need more sway. And not the crappy sway we have now where your sights suddenly jump from one random point on the screen to another but realistic smooth "figure 8" kind of sway kind of like in vbs2 or America's army. Adding this sway would slow us to decrease ai accuracy without having a huge advantage over them thus increasing firefight lengths even more.

I think sway is kind of a crude way to mitigate range weapons as I'm perfectly able to hold a rifle steady shit out of breath, sweating like a pig, and scared out of my wits; and I'm sure there are younger fellers then me that can do at least as well if not better.

A better approach might be to model some of the more realistic aspects of long range shooting: planting your self and getting your rifle in a good position should take a bit more time, as should moving (which should add more sway momentarily). IRL being smooth on the trigger is harder for some then lining up a good sight picture and steadying their weapon -- not sure how that could be implemented, but there could be a 'squeeze timer' similarly to America's Army breath hold timer, and synchronizing two variables like this would be even more like real long range shooting.

Lastly a server side 'wind var' could be added to maps where ranged shooting might be a problem, and depending on the kind of game you wanted to prevail on your server you could set it from 'doldrums', 'light', 'strong' or even 'strong and gusty' where this last would make ranged shooting a challenging test for even the most skilled virtual marksmen. Of course you'd need wind indicators on the map like foliage that bent and blew in scale to wind strength, and perhaps an hand-held Anemometer for your Designated Marksman or Sniper, just like the real deal...

[-Coulum-]

@hoak
So what your suggesting is it just takes more time to settle your sights but after enough time they will loose virtually all sway. Move again, scope out and then in again or fire and that sway will be temporarily regained for a bit until you have set up again. Think this would be pretty useful and realistic. Good idea.

I'm perfectly able to hold a rifle steady shit out of breath, sweating like a pig, and scared out of my wits; and I'm sure there are younger fellers then me that can do at least as well if not better.

Impressive... But I think you are among the minority on this account. Even though I am young and athletic I can't hold a rifle straight when breathing heavily unless bracing it against something. I don't think it would be unreasonable to add temporary weapon sway when fatigued suppressed or wounded.

. And like mentioned before sway should be smooth and natural rather than choppy and random like it is currently.

[NoRailgunner]

Precision settings in user cfg aren't important anymore since patch 1.60, weapon cfg's determine the distance/use of weapon for AI and for further tweaking you may try changing AI skills via scripts http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/CfgAISkill or addon (ASR AI). Its a wrong assumption that scopes/optics make a weapon itself "better" or "great", this should be left to arcade/shooter games. Should AI with a long range sniper rifle be "better" in CQB than a AI with ironsight/reflex sights? Btw AI don't "look" and "see" all the things ingame like players do.

[Tonci87]

Thats what I heard as well but I haven't actually fool around with it. I just have it set to one and jool around with asr ai settings.

But I find that the ai with the highest possible accuracy still isn't as good a shooter as a player. I mean give an ai a sniper rifle and even with full precision accuracy whatever he still fails at shooting anything over 450 metres. One of the problems with arma is that the ai seem to be too accurate with shitty guns but not accurate enough with good guns/optics. I think it may be worth it to make ai skills become better or worse depending not only on their class but also on their weapons.
Ie.
give an ai an ak and his accuracy decreases and his rate of fire increases due to the crappy sights and the way the weapon was designed to be used.
give an ai a sniper rifle and his spot distance increases due to the optics, accuracy increases also due to optics, and spot time decreases due to the limited fov.
of course some of these skills could not be permanetly placed because if a sniper isn't looking through his scope his spot time distance accuracy etc wouldn't be effected. It would only apply when the ai look through its sights - which I don't believe happens... that would have to be fixed some how.
Anyways what do you guys think of weapons haveing an effect on ai skills? I think this could also help firefights become more realistic and longer without making the ai sharpshooters totally useless.

I think it should be a combination between skill and Weapon.