Movement from prone position for AI

[DesertJedi]

I was playing A2 and I and my AI squad had become engaged with enemies. I must have ordered my squad to a certain spot. Previously, they were all prone and the last formation command was "line".

I turn to see their progress and I see a whole line of my AI mates prone and squirming on the ground on the way to their new location. I was struck by how stupid it looked. It then occurred to me that not only would a soldier not do that, it would actually put them at greater risk. They were totally in the open and exposed for a time that would have allowed me to answer a Final Jeopardy question. IRL, when a soldier moves to one location to another prone-to-prone, he would get up and sprint to the new location and then go prone again. Staying prone with no cover and taking five minutes to get to your new location by squirming there puts a soldier at too much risk.

Sure, there are times when you would stay prone to maintain cover as you moved but this was not one of those times.

My suggestion would be to have a prone soldier, when ordered to a new location, to get up and sprint to a new location and then dive prone once again. Not only would that look far less dumb, I think it would be far better soldiering.

And another annoyance is when there is no threat whatsoever, if you order a soldier to a location and he happens to be prone, he will crawl to the new location - even if he's perfectly capable of walking. I shouldn't have to constantly order my troops to stand up when its obvious they should do so. How many times have you ordered your troops into the chopper and then wait and wait until you realize that your AI is crawling to the chopper - for no reason.

[Bulldogs]

If you set your troops to "danger" mode then they'll crawl and use cover constantly. If you set them to "safe" then they'll stand up and run like there's no enemy for miles.

The point of the prone crawling is that you have put them in danger mode which basically is telling them they are surrounded by enemy pressence, and just like a soldier in real life, if there's no cover around they know that if they stay low it makes them harder to see and makes a smaller target for them to hit. Any good marksmen could hit a moving target at 400m, but with controlled surpression and prone movements you've got a higher survivability.

That said, it would be good for them to have town behaviour. They sort of do as when you put them in danger mode they take cover constantly, but they don't really have a high paced "fire and move" mode. You can put them on "aware" which is often better but I'm not sure how you'd get them to move fast, could possibly be written into a behavioural script.

[ActionMan]

That only happens to me when I tell the AI to go prone -- when I do that they will stay prone until I tell them to get up. Also if I tell them to use stealth they go prone a lot.

But I've never seen them crawl around for no reason when in 'alert' mode.

[DesertJedi]

Thanks for the clarification. I guess I'd then have to say that part of my frustration is having to tell them everything...constantly. A little independent thought could help out a lot here.

I was playing Arma 2 and trying to advance quickly to the next objective. Since we had been engaged just before, my AI men were doing the cover-and-move hootchie-mama. Finally, I just ran back to them and watched to see what was going on. I was like WTF? I put them in Safe mode and they finally cut the crap.

If the friendly AI cheated just enough to know that there weren't any enemies for miles around, it could make the game flow a lot more smoothly. There's simply way too much hand-holding in both Arma and Arma 2.

But then again, maybe I wouldn't mind so much in the command interface wasn't such a PITA.

[NeMeSiS]

Thanks for the clarification. I guess I'd then have to say that part of my frustration is having to tell them everything...constantly. A little independent thought could help out a lot here.

When engaged in combat they automatically go into combat mode, when combat is over they automatically go back to aware if you havent fiddled with the behaviour modes yourself.

[Flash Thunder]

Order your squad to either go in "safe" mode or order them to stand up.