AI Driving - Feedback topic

[lexx 1331]

I don't know. As far as I can remember, ai driving was pretty crappy in ArmA2 already. Never played ArmA1, but I somehow doubt it was much better there.

[Alwarren 2765]

6 hours ago, joostsidy said:

- Convoys need to be set on 'CARELESS'.

 

CARELESS will not make the AI engage ever. It would work for this specific example, but not if you have actual guns in it. And sadly, you cannot make the gunner a separate group (I tried), because if the gunner is not in the vehicle group the vehicle will not drive anywhere.

 

6 hours ago, joostsidy said:

This behaviour is not so much truly careless, but more 'STICK TO YOUR WAYPOINTS WHATEVER HAPPENS'. Unlike 'CARELESS', the 'SAFE' behaviour allows for switching to 'COMBAT', which means evasive manoeuvres that you don't want in a convoy.
- Arma vehicles often drive too fast, which exaggerates the bumping problem. Use the limitSpeed command to fix speeds to more appropriate values for mountain roads and convoys.

 

"Evasive maneuvers" would be fine if that means going off-road, as a matter of fact, I would prefer them to try and safe their skin. But they turn around and drive back to their spawn point, all the way to the beginning, even if there had been a hundred of waypoints inbetween. Regardless of how you can or cannot work around this, it's a glaring bug.

 

And sadly, it is only one of half a million. As I said, gunner in a separate group will not move at all. Convoys of different vehicles will still bump into each other. There should really be a specific convoy waypoint, or a way to control convoys via a module, because right now, however you turn it it's a mess.

 

Doesn't have anything to do with fanboys either. I have 5400 hours on the clock, I'm not a fanboy, I'm addicted. But there are way too many places were you need workarounds or compromises, especially when it comes to driving.

[Alwarren 2765]

4 hours ago, lexx said:

I think the main problem here is that folks expect convoys to work "as is" - put down waypoints and suddenly everything happens the way you want it.

 

There isn't anything wrong with that assumption. But I am aware that things in Arma need to be done differently. In VBS, for example, you can set the covering arcs for gunners in convoy vehciles. With the new module you can control separation. And whatever you do, if you have trucks and cars in a convoy, they will bump into each other or kick each other off the road. The only thing that works is a dedicated convoy AI, with the user being able to edit the parameters.

[krycek 349]

Yeah the convoys in A2 were a mess especially in towns, they basically managed to reach their destination as long as they were in safe mode. Of course even if an ant farted it could destabilize their little brains.

There are also other issues with AI driving like being stuck into the bigger trees or if they bump into each other, or the damn flipping problem. Actually the flipping problem is way worse in A3, in A2 I think only the train tracks caused the tanks to go belly up.

[joostsidy 682]

4 hours ago, Alwarren said:

 

CARELESS will not make the AI engage ever. It would work for this specific example, but not if you have actual guns in it.

This is simply not true, I just tried it in the editor with a group consisting of a Prowler (armed), a medical HEMTT, a hunter (HMG) and a Marshall.

 

4 hours ago, Alwarren said:

 But they turn around and drive back to their spawn point, all the way to the beginning, even if there had been a hundred of waypoints inbetween. Regardless of how you can or cannot work around this, it's a glaring bug.

I agree, this is very serious vehicle breaking bug.

 

4 hours ago, Alwarren said:

Convoys of different vehicles will still bump into each other.

limitSpeed does a lot to counter this, although the fact remains that all vehicles are half-blind to obstacles.

 

4 hours ago, Alwarren said:

 you can set the covering arcs for gunners in convoy vehciles. W

Although this sounds like a cool feature, the default is not half-bad in my opinion. In my 4 vehicle mixed convoy the leader gun was looking forward, the hunter to the side and the Marshall to the rear by default. With scripting I usually add a scanning arc to turrets which would make a good default feature to have I agree.

 

My findings with a mixed convoy:

- On 'CARELESS' and with a speed limit, a convoy consisting of a Prowler (armed), HEMTT and hunter (HMG) are actually doing quite nice. Staying in formation, with good inter-distance and firing at the enemy while escaping.

- However, with careless, you can't add an armored vehicle to the convoy because they will turn out and only shoot with their rifles (!) The turn in action command to force them inside doesn't work and seems broken.

- not using careless, but using setCombatMode 'YELLOW' seems promising because it means: open fire / keep formation. You can actually hear the commander yell 'keep formation' once in a while. However the vehicles will leave the road a bit and get stuck on poles, rocks etc. and try to return to their starting point.

 

Basically, using a mixed convoy including an armored vehicle is impossible now.

 

Convoys would work better if:

- Some independent command to keep vehicles on the road is provided.

- Better obstacle detection: if my convoy vehicles left the road (on Altis) they got stuck in seconds on telephone poles and rocks.

- The 'return to the start' bug is fixed.

- We could force turn in crew so the whole convoy, including IFV's could run on 'CARELESS'. I like the 'shoot while driving on' version that this combat mode provides. This is probably the easiest fix!

 

 

 

 

[kremator 1064]

On 28/07/2017 at 5:34 PM, .kju said:

 

Scandalous that we cannot get this.  They even have bloody articulated lorries in Sahrani FFS navigating the bridges.  What are they trying to do - really rub it in that we have shit AI ?

 

The lada suicide bomber car was crap however (unless they were skidding - but it wasn't shown on the road)

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

One can only hope that with the tanks DLC, BI will give us some refinements for driving and convoy logic. 

 

EDIT: Wow you're right about the bridges. I'm jealous.

[kibyde 64]

Can't say why but driving and convoy behaviour was much better in Take on Helicopter. I try to port my missions from TOH to ArmA3 but the driving AI makes some missions impossible. in TOH I would place a convoy of 2x btr-90 + 1x technical in the south of zargabad, give them 1 waypoint to drive to the villa in the nort-east and they would just do that. In ArmA3 same situation is almost impossible to achieve. If I'm lucky 1 vehicle makes it to the villa the other one end up somewhere on the other end of zargabad. Often vehicles simply stop moving although there are no obstacles near.

 

You can set the convoy to combat behaviour (I do that via the waypoint settings) so the gunners attack targets and keep just the drivers at careless (via init field).

[lexx 1331]

I've setup another convoy right now for test and also used "this setConvoySeparation 5;" to set the vehicle distance. Wasn't there also a new "force stay on road" command? Tried to find it right now, but can't.

 

Used a Marid, an Ifrit HMG, Tempest, Ifrit HMG. Every armed vehicle was looking into a different direction. Even in careless mode they engaged the enemy. Interestingly, I was unable to pass any bridge near Zaros. The first vehicle did, every other vehicle stopped in front of it, not moving a bit anymore. Tried the same on the next bridge and got the same result. I'm pretty sure this worked at some point before?

 

PS: You can even use a tracked vehicle in the convoy, for as long as you force it's speed lower and make it the head of the convoy.

[R3vo 2652]

I think we need a convoy waypoint which has several attributes like: Stay on road, convoy seperation and vehicle speed.

 

Basically similar to what they have in VBS.

[Alwarren 2765]

10 hours ago, joostsidy said:

This is simply not true, I just tried it in the editor with a group consisting of a Prowler (armed), a medical HEMTT, a hunter (HMG) and a Marshall.

 

I stand corrected then. I was under the impression that AI will not fire if set to Careless. They will, however, be turned out and have their lights on all the time, which is not necessarily what you want.

 

The major issue, however, still stands. Every time someone points out a workaround, even to a glaring issue, BIS has an excuse not to fix it. This has to stop. There are a myriad of issue, big and small, that remain unfixed because there always is "a workaround". The issue with the convoy returning to its origin is in there since the updated AI was released. 

 

Another example is that if a disembarked motorized or mechanized group is in danger mode already, they will constantly get in and out of their vehicle without going anywhere.

Another example is cars bumping into each other because they are not able to brake in time or have a longer brake path, especially when driving downhill.

Another example is grouped AI knowing instantaneously that one member of their group has been killed even without radio even at a long distance.

Another example is the detected-by Trigger triggering even if the unit that detected is killed within the allotted timeout time.

The list is huge.

 

The issue here is that a very large portion of AI behaviour or game mechanics REQUIRE workaround or scripting to even get working, even though at face value nothing is wrong. 

 

Now I have been called a fanboy multiple times, and I really hate it when people just whine and say that "everything is fucked up" or "it seems DLC is more important to them". I always advocate pointing out specific issues and come up with reproducible cases to test. However, this is difficult if exactly these kind of reproducible cases are ignored and the bugs remain unfixed.

 

Another example is the Zeus interface. When I select a group in danger mode and set it back to Safe or Aware, it immediately goes back into danger mode. That is not intuitive behavior. Why even include this functionality if it doesn't work? And then, when someone asks whether it is possible to set loadout in game, the reply is "We cannot provide something that everybody likes and works reliable all the time so we don't do it". However, the game is full with half-baked or dysfunctional features, and the current fatigue system was universally hated by the hardcore crowd.

 

Anyway, I give up. Apparently we will have to live with half-baked functionality and bugs, and editing missions for this game is getting increasingly frustrating trying to get things to work that, on face value, should be working out of the box. Things that work fine in other games (and before someone yells "big map", convoys do work in Ghorst Recon Wildlands, and that map is bigger than Altis).

 

It just makes me wish Arma had a competitor :(

 

Alright, end of rant. Carry on.

[R3vo 2652]

Quote

 

And then, when someone asks whether it is possible to set loadout in game, the reply is "We cannot provide something that everybody likes and works reliable all the time so we don't do it". However, the game is full with half-baked or dysfunctional features, and the current fatigue system was universally hated by the hardcore crowd.

 

 

That half backed feature thing is something I hate so much about Arma. They announce a new Revive system, but 2 years later it's still the same crap which no serious community can use.

Same for Eden Custom Compositions. The buttons are in the interface but the feature seems to be abandoned.

[joostsidy 682]

2 hours ago, lexx said:

I've setup another convoy right now for test and also used "this setConvoySeparation 5;" to set the vehicle distance. Wasn't there also a new "force stay on road" command? Tried to find it right now, but can't.

 

I will try the setConvoySeperation, see if it does something useful. The editor unit dialog (using 3den editor mod) shows a 'force stay on road', but it seems broken. I've looked for the command or function elsewhere but couldn't find it.

[Alwarren 2765]

42 minutes ago, R3vo said:

That half backed feature thing is something I hate so much about Arma. They announce a new Revive system, but 2 years later it's still the same crap which no serious community can use.

Same for Eden Custom Compositions. The buttons are in the interface but the feature seems to be abandoned.

 

I remember from one of the early Arma 3 videos where they said that "the inventory is just a prototype right now".

 

37 minutes ago, joostsidy said:

I will try the setConvoySeperation, see if it does something useful. The editor unit dialog (using 3den editor mod) shows a 'force stay on road', but it seems broken. I've looked for the command or function elsewhere but couldn't find it.

 

It does, I've used it before. I had a convoy that kept bumping into each other on a hillside, so I use this to pull it apart a bit to give the other vehicles a chance to brake in time.

 

[Alwarren 2765]

2 hours ago, lexx said:

Wasn't there also a new "force stay on road" command? Tried to find it right now, but can't.

 

if you mean setDriveOnPath, that is something different.

[R3vo 2652]

20 hours ago, Alwarren said:

 

I remember from one of the early Arma 3 videos where they said that "the inventory is just a prototype right now"

 

They also wanted to improve all inventory related commands to fix inconsitencies etc.

 

 

Just created the page for forceFollowRoad

 

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/forceFollowRoad

 

 

setConvoySeparation

 

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/setConvoySeparation

 

[joostsidy 682]

21 minutes ago, R3vo said:

Just created the page for forceFollowRoad

 

I ran a couple of tests with my mixed convoy (prowler, hemtt, hunter, marshall) and this command seems broken. When vehicles switch to combat mode (starting with aware) they will leave the road. When they return to AWARE I think the forceFollowRoad functions again, but vehicles are unable to make a U-turn because they think they need more space than the road width allows. Such a vehicle will endlessly go back and forth a very small distance.

 

I would love for this command to work properly as an alternative to CARELESS.

[R3vo 2652]

19 minutes ago, joostsidy said:

 

I ran a couple of tests with my mixed convoy (prowler, hemtt, hunter, marshall) and this command seems broken. When vehicles switch to combat mode (starting with aware) they will leave the road. When they return to AWARE I think the forceFollowRoad functions again, but vehicles are unable to make a U-turn because they think they need more space than the road width allows. Such a vehicle will endlessly go back and forth a very small distance.

 

I would love for this command to work properly as an alternative to CARELESS.

 

Can confirm this, as soon as I put this in the init of the vehicles they weren't able to u-turn anymore.

 

My question is, do you use setConvoySeperation on all vehicles in the convoy or only the group leader?

[joostsidy 682]

 

A big problem seems to be that the commanders of the convoy vehicles override the leader of the convoy. When they have difficulty with a target they start issuing movement commands of their own. Is there a way to prevent this? Vehicles do need a commander to move at all in the convoy.

 

I had partial succes with the convoy in CARELESS and an ungrouped gunner of the marshall in AWARE. This way the gunner can turn in and engage targets with the main gun. The commander will stay turned out like a WW 2 tank commander :-)

I had partial succes with disabling 'AUTOCOMBAT' on all units. With this approach the convoy stays on the road in AWARE and making it possible for the Marshall crew to be properly grouped, turned in and use the main gun.

 

However, screwups still occur. They just won't keep on driving on the road at all times when the convoy includes multiple armed vehicles and under medium/heavy threat.

 

[Alwarren 2765]

1 hour ago, joostsidy said:

I would love for this command to work properly as an alternative to CARELESS.

 

We need a proper CONVOY behavior mode I think, and proper waypoints for this. As it is now, it's just too much compromise and guesswork.

[joostsidy 682]

2 minutes ago, Alwarren said:

 

We need a proper CONVOY behavior mode I think, and proper waypoints for this. As it is now, it's just too much compromise and guesswork.

Of course that would be the best outcome.

 

I'm just thinking small steps as development on driving AI is very limited. :-)

 

Best outcome for me would be that relevant commands and AI features are fixed or created and these are combined in an official Convoy module so we could quickly set up a simple convoy or use its component features to script more advanced versions.

[joostsidy 682]

1 hour ago, R3vo said:

My question is, do you use setConvoySeperation on all vehicles in the convoy or only the group leader?

No, it should be set on all vehicles. You could even have say 40m between the first two vehicles and then 20m between the next two vehicles. I sets the distance to keep to the following vehicle.

 

[R3vo 2652]

1 hour ago, joostsidy said:

No, it should be set on all vehicles. You could even have say 40m between the first two vehicles and then 20m between the next two vehicles. I sets the distance to keep to the following vehicle.

 

 

That makes sense.

[kremator 1064]

4 hours ago, joostsidy said:

 

A big problem seems to be that the commanders of the convoy vehicles override the leader of the convoy. When they have difficulty with a target they start issuing movement commands of their own. Is there a way to prevent this? Vehicles do need a commander to move at all in the convoy.

 

I had partial succes with the convoy in CARELESS and an ungrouped gunner of the marshall in AWARE. This way the gunner can turn in and engage targets with the main gun. The commander will stay turned out like a WW 2 tank commander :-)

I had partial succes with disabling 'AUTOCOMBAT' on all units. With this approach the convoy stays on the road in AWARE and making it possible for the Marshall crew to be properly grouped, turned in and use the main gun.

 

However, screwups still occur. They just won't keep on driving on the road at all times when the convoy includes multiple armed vehicles and under medium/heavy threat.

 

We shouldn't HAVE to fart around like this.  BIS FIX IT !!

[.kju 3240]

On 29.7.2017 at 1:47 PM, joostsidy said:

Lessons learned:
1. 'CARELESS' mode is very important. In the above examples the vehicles kept very well to their appointed waypoint.

 

 

> Cars/trucks not sticking to roads in combat mode

https://dev.withsix.com/issues/16120

 

> Make "careless" behavior mode available in the (complex) command menu

http://dev.withsix.com/issues/16117