Yeah ai has always bin a problem with the arma franchise. They are better then they where in arma 2 but they defiantly could use some more tweaking.

One big issue i had was when i was just sitting still and the ai is right besides me, i would give it the follow me command and it would drive off way too the left then come back and stop even tho i never moved and it was right there besides me.

+1

Some observations so far...

Tried to create a convoy last night in Editor.

3 Hunters moving along road from south to base in north, normal speed, safe behaviour and column formation. It didn't go so well.

Vehicles were going at normal speed yet seemed to struggle making a lot of the turns, then braking to standstill or constantly starting and then slamming on the brakes, then slowly starting up again, then hitting the car in front, then waiting for the car in front to move while the car in front is reversing into them and...rolling the other car onto its side and everyone getting out.
Excruciating.

Tried slowing the speed to limited, but this also saw mixed results with some cars 'catching' (ironically) on the crash barrier because they were driving alongside another vehicle they were supposed to stay behind and then all occupants dismounting and standing still next to their vehicle.

I'm hoping the sounds for the vehicles are not final as the constant braking 'squeak' drives me nuts after 1 km.

Similar behaviours observed for the Ifrit as well, though the KA-60 pathfinding seems more refined than the MH-9 for some reason which frequently just stops mid route.

AI on foot seems ok for the most part and I love that AI mortars are firing now :)

wow, i didn't know AI mortars can now fire ! I tried, but it seems it works only if the mortar can see the ennemy...

the constant gas and breaking drives me insane in vehicles controlled by AI. I think reduce the break noise, wouldnt make it so nautious

Some roads are "known" by AI drivers and if there are no building near, they have a good behevior, but others are not. For instance, in agia marina, they don't "know" that there is a bridge and they try to cross the canal somewhere else, which create a mess and end up usually with explosions... due to the insane amount of damages caused by collisions, but this is another issue!

the problem with the AI driven vehicles getting stuck on rocks and not being able to move definitely needs addressing IMO

This issue was processed by our team and will be looked into. We thank you for your feedback.

Please keep the issue monitored to see when it is fixed.

Please create a simple mission with specific example and I will investigate.

Does it really need a repro mission to investigate the problem? Especially when it is an issue which already exists for years.

Simply drop a group of vehicles in the edtor, give them a waypoint and watch them...

Why on earth would you need more info on this? Its the same regarding all missions however you set it up? It will literary take you 1 minute to jump in the editor and tell three cars to go from one point to another and see them fail spectacularly.

Are you telling me you don't have 1 minute to set up the scenario but you have 1 month to work out the problem? Because somehow I don't think there's an easy fix for this, and we all know you guys are aware of this problem. It would be better for all parts if you were just honest about it I think.

Fully agree with the guys above,this problem is ancient and I'm 200% certain that BI is very aware of it.Please try to respect us a bit and don't act like this is something that popped yesterday in A3 Alpha.
Either you're a new dev on board which I fully understand if you aren't aware of the problem or either you've been long enough with BI but you actually never played your own games if you ask for more repro steps at this stage.

The vehicle pathfinding and especially the braking/move on safe mode in convoy,crossing the bridges issue,teammates run over by friendly vehicles or cornering issues in towns is something known from A2 1.0 release and even A1 if my memory still serves right.

Guys, your comments aren't at all helpful.

Regardless of the age of the problem, it's worthwhile to point out specific examples/cases and make simple repro missions where AI driver pathfinding fails, so that the devs can test these specific instances.

As it stands now, the description of the problem is extremely vague, there is no explanation of what specifically the AI are doing wrong, no observed+expected behaviour etc.

I personally just plonked down an AI vehicle in the editor, gave it a waypoint 2.5km away and watched it move there successfully. If I were a dev, I would now close this ticket with "unable to reproduce". It needs more info, plain and simple.

All future unconstructive comments on this topic will be deleted on sight.

I've made some missions to repro.AI set on Safe and Column formation,normal speed.A few Notes:

"Fubar AI" mission:slow cornering,brake/move,bridge not crossable,lead vehicle going in different direction when at bridge,second vehicle crashing into first vehicle and so on.Restart the mission a few times and you'll also notice the lead vehicle or second one hitting the house at ID 5977.

"Convoy in town" mission:Braking a lot,slow cornering,lead vehicle hitting electricity pole or fence,second vehicle sometimes miss the cornering.

"Convoy on open roads" mission:AI hits the brakes too much.When it arrives at junction lead vehicle slows too much but takes the cornering in the end,second vehicle has problem making a right turn halting the rest of the convoy.

@MadDogX,you'll never find any pathfinding issues by putting a single vehicle on the map and make it drive from A to B on open roads.Even in convoy they'll drive ok-ish if the road doesn't have junctions and AI doesn't have to make right&left turns or driving through towns.

EDIT:Had to put the missions in a Rar archive since the bugtracker doesn't let me upload the mission pbo.

Think one of the common issues with AI in vehicles are the limitations, whatever applies to us, applies to them, since they dont have the full control over the vehicle it can be expected that they will speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, and also this can most likely also be the cause of crashing. I see the same behaviour with human players. More control of vehicles could lead to smoother trips, so this ticket http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=5711 could help solve the problem.

As for the waypoints, well that will need work. I played some of that command carrier and I have to say the AI seemed to follow waypoints alot better there... They should look into that and perhaps rip that code? They can do that right???

But otherwise yeah, the devs need to work on the AI... I still say after ArmA3 has been released and settles down, they should start from scratch and rebuild everything from the ground up. New Virtual reality engine, not just extensions.

Wouldn't it be possible to generate a texture based on the entire map with 256 shades of gray and generate the shades based on ease of access, roads get the lightest color, things like rocks, houses, stone fences gets the darkest. Then vary the shade based on gradient of the hills and spotted enemy. Then have the AI follow the most light route possible (base it on estimated time on arrival with the importance of haste)? Lay a base path at each waypoint and then finetune the path along the way with regards to blocked roads and spotted enemies.

Bar they have to work on more than just this issue.

You taking that 1 minute to set up a simple mission to give them more time to work on other things gives them more incentive to do something about it.

The problem is just the way the AI are programmed, there are mods/scripts which have fixed it in A2.

I have no problem going over 30 around most turns, just need to slow down & speed up half way into the turn like you would in reality.

Bar, how is the 256 shades of grey idea going to solve the pathing problem beyond just color coding which dosen't help the AI as much as it would a person.

AI just process commands, they don't process colors.

Sure the AI processes commands but there is hopefully some code behind those commands no? Logic algorithms that instructs the AI where to go? Some sort of pathfinding?

As for public beta testers having to give devs incentives to do their work, that's silly, it's their job, its what they get paid for, and most probably they love it.

All I'm saying is they need to devote time and personnel on it, there are so many obvious flaws with the current implementation. I could understand it if it was a fringe case, if the behavior was hard to replicate, but it's not. You can literary plonk down three vehicles on a road, tell them to go somewhere in a convoy, place an enemy squad in the middle. Most likely they won't even make it to the enemy squad.

Let me rephrase that, giving them something to work with so they can save time rather than put more time in trying to recreate a problem with a vague description which in some cases may not work when they go to do it thus wasting time that could be put towards fixing other things.

It's easy to replicate, but a community member taking 5 minutes out of their day to give them something they can load & work with from the get go saves them a few minutes that will otherwise go toward another problem that has higher priority or faster to get to work on.

After looking at the 3 missions attached, I must say it is 1000 times better than in Arma 2 in the begging! I mean, it wasn't possible sometimes to reach the position, even in hours; and driving in a convoy wasn't even imaginable! So I think that the developers have done a really good work, but there still need some work. I think when the vehicle get stuck for example (rocks, trees, others vehicles, etc...), or when the isn't any roads, sometimes the way choosen is a little bit strange. For the cities, I think it isn't perfect but quite playable...

We have major problems with this too. AI suck at driving. The worst example is when I occupy a territory with enemy, I like to place vehicles with a search and destroy way-point covering a large area. That way, I don't even know where they will be. I am not kidding, when we play the mission, over 75 to 80 percent of all the vehicles are stuck on rocks by the time we get there. This is so unrealistic. In an entire war there might be 1 fool who gets there vehicle stuck. In Arma 3 that all get stuck. It is a disaster.

Just be glad they don't send your tank flying 100 feet in the air, worse than an AT mine.

Yeah I haven't made a mission specifically about the stuck on rocks problem but I assume 99,9% of the players met that already with AI drivers.

Now I'm currently working on a mission to repro everytime the AI running over teammates.The results are baffling to say the least.
Sometimes they stop when meeting npcs in front while other times they stop,then going backwards to find a different route or they return to the first route and run over everything in sight.

I've made a repro mission and filmed various AI's "achievements",while driving in a convoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1MrM8LiDCs - Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFLF-U2xTo - Part 2

It's worth noting, that after recording of 33 minutes of video, I thought to myself: "no one is going to watch this for half an hour, let's leave only the quirky parts and cut out the good driving". To my surprise, I had to cut only 8 minutes, which gives 25%. For the 3/4 of the time, AI is goofing around and this is even without enemy around.

The road I chose to follow is not accidental - this is exactly the same road, I had to travel during "Coming through" downloaded mission, only with 4 Hunters. In the end, in order to finish the mission, I had to personally drive 1 Hunter and complete objectives with a help of only 3 AI soldiers. After finishing with enemies, I ordered the remaining Hunters to drive to Camp Maxwell one by one and even that wasn't without problems. I had to switch to two of them and personally get them out of trouble. One was stuck on a building and the other felt into the forest near Mike-26. This story is to show the real scale of the issue and it was only a small and simple (although very nice and well thought) mission!

Sadly, the videos above didn't caught the moment, when one of the Hunters literally blew up, after hitting a rock at high speed (this was a rehearsal drive and the camera wasn't running).

That's another problem, objects sporadically exploding/combusting from hitting things, it really kills a lot of the fun/creativity that could be employed.

I hope the devs take a good look at those 2 videos,great job much better than my 3 missions.AI driving it's not barely working it's pure and simple broken at this stage.

I saw some improvements since the 0.58... Did you ??

I heard the bridge problem would be fixed, I don't know then...

What kind of improvements brunova, it helps when your a bit more specific so the devs can fine tune.

Before .58 i made a mission to observe AI behavior. There was one motorized squad in each side for support. (just a GUARD waypoint, away from the hot spot, with no behavior mode change). The battle took place at Air Station Mike -26 (043038), so it was not an urban battle.

Results were horribles : the cars seemed to struggle to go the station by the road. Once arrived on the battle place, they were unable to move correctly, stucked in crash barriers or in rocks.

I tried the same mission with the new update (0.58), AI seems to follow the road more easily. For crash barriers or rocks, I didn't see any problem, but it need more testing.

I thougth it was messed up also in ArmA 2 until I discovered that all my issues I had were about ranks and who is in what position in formation/convoy. Once I had mastered that things, convoys started to do their jobs. Same in ArmA 3 thus I downvoted this. I found AI pathfinding not perfect, but even nor so horrible as you describe.

Everything isn't about rank. You can set a car to colonel & a BTR to private, the BTR will still drive in front of the car. The devs have set up armor to go in front regardless of the order you set things on the map, which ruins the whole point of setting up an AI convoy.

It is horrible without a scripter/modder to fix it.

only I can say to you is that IT IS all about these things, either keep crying it's not working or do some investigation. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy next convoy ambush today

Punk, how about uploading a mission to test, or describe how you set it up to work, in detail so that others can try and test to confirm your claim?

jesus.... I just made a long post and lost it because of session timeout

Lol been there more than once... Just ctrl+a and copy before submitting, its become a habit for me.

Okay here it is again...

1. Add units you want to be in convoy on map.

2. Group them together, make sure they are all in one group. You can achieve this either by dragging a line from each to other while in group mode (F2) or by JOIN and JOIN AND LEAD waypoints, which has to be synchronized together (F5). Since ranks are important in convoy, I recommend to start experiment with simpler convoys first and use first method. If you want them start in formation, you should already have it set (default is special: IN FORMATION). If you want them positioned exactly as you tell, give them special: NONE.

3. Now you need to tell what posisitons should vehicles in convoy take. It's not so black and white here and needs little experimenting sometimes. I found out that sometimes it's not enough that unit is a rank higher than previous one. I had to switch them to SAERGANT vs PRIVATE to achieve one of them to be in front of convoy, but as far as I can tell, I always managed it to the state I wanted the convoy to look like. Goal here is to get comfortable with convoy order.

4. To make convoy start to move, place simple MOVE waypoint with SAFE behaviour to the destination place. This will force them to move in tight collumn (formation is not applied in SAFE behaviour). But once they get under contact, they will change it's behaviour to AWARE or DANGER.

5. When they come under contact, that's the moment they start to apply formation and change their combat behaviour. I suggest STAGGERED COLLUMN or WEDGE so they start to move by bounds. But maybe more important is its combat mode. If you want them to spread out and hunt actively for threats, use FIRE AT WILL, ENGAGE AT WILL. If you want them to only defend as they can, but continue to move as group use FIRE AT WILL. If you want them to flee, regroup somewhere and continue, set all units in the convoy "unit allowFleeing 0.75" or finetune the value to your needs. This can be done easily by writing this command into leader's init field: "{_x allowFleeing 0.75} forEach units group this;"

6. If or after they survive the ambush, they should regroup, switch to SAFE behaviour again and continue to waypoint automatically. But they won't if there are still contacts in the area. They have to engage, stay pinned down or flee, no other possibility. For this I recommend some sort of support for them. Easiest it to put quick reaction force team or some CAS helicopter on map and give it GUARD waypoint. It should come automatically to reinforce ambushed enemy. Things may change dramatically when enemy chopper gets to the ambushed area before the convoy is completely destroyed.

That's how I do it. When this doesn't work, I'll admit that it's bugged, but for me, it works like a charm. It's just not so easy to handle all of that without knowing some details about how things work in ArmA.

P.S. it became my habit too just now

and I forgot to mention waypoint speed setting and possibility of using "unit forceSpeed 5" to force unit's speed to be 5 m/s (don't mix up with km/h)

Generally it can be said:
SLOW - they don't advance untill everybody is in formation
NORMAL - this is default, if there's gap, front vehicles will slow down, others tries to catch them, then they will move fast again
FAST - they don't wait for others to keep the formation

so I think about it like it changes group behaviour more, speed can always be set by other way

Great, thank you punk. So now everyone must just test it. Be nice to share a mission with this setup, and then i thinkwe can see what the outcome is, maybe its just lack of proper documentation in how to make it work.

punkatux, don't post here anymore if you're going to act like a douche bag instead of helping.

Punkatux,I doubt it's about ranking,why in a straight road without any obstacles they drive ok-ish most of the time,but when they need to corner or pass through a town(or God forbids passing and cornering in a town) everything goes to hell??
Should I mention again the rock climbing and getting stuck?
And I'm not even talking about convoy with enemy contacts,just simple driving.
If you indeed managed to get a convoy running why not upload a video?

The only improvements I indeed saw with the latest builds is that they cross bridges better,but I truly hope the devs won't believe that bridges were the only problem.
Look at their video presentations(E3 etc) and you'll notice it's either some AI infantry action or an AI chopper flying around.If it wasn't something wrong with their driving AI why they won't show it on a bigger scale(more than one vehicle)??

Actually I think people who haven't even read what safe behaviour changes about pathways in BIS documentation are douchebags in my view, cause it's them flooding bugreports with complaining about things that already work, but okay I won't as you wish SGTIce. I helped as I could with my long post.

It works for me so I don't have any reason to update this anymore.

And when I said it's about ranks, I meant the order of convoy, not anything related to pathways.

Converted it to a convoy bug, because

a) it seems to be better reproducable
b) everyone talks only about convoy driving now
c) it's a classic issue still ported from OA

Part of the problem is the formation ai: sometimes the AI will not take the shortest/easiest path to its position in formation, especially in vehicles. If they overshoot their position or are blocked by some obstacle or steep slope, they will spaz out.

it's getting better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H6Jp6CsXnY

got any cases where it still fail ? please include repro missions

That's quite an improvement Dwarden,really glad you guys decided to "take on" this old issue.Convoy seems to move seamless.
Still there are a few issues with moving through Agia Marina.I can't repro every time but this happens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS_L7R1ysOQ

Settings:safe/column
Sorry for the jerky framerate,it's because of the stupid recording program.

Please attach the repro mission.

Done.:)

Something that the developper/moderator have to not forget is that if you put an obstacle on the road (a road is not always empty like in these videos), the first vehicle will pass and then the others will often take more time, or anyway, they will be delayed. And with the "normal" speed mode (versus "full" mode), the leader should wait, so the convoy stay together, and this never happend! So ok, cool, a convoy can now follow a road, but it is almost never the case in the game, like in a combat situation, or with other vehicle in front, or in a village, etc...
Edit: by the way, I think a convoy should also be possible in combat behaviour mode.

If I remember correctly from my time in the army, we were always in a "safe mode" when moving troops in a column, until we were attacked. And when attacked, no-one stayed on the road (..or the officers were very very angry...).
In Arma 3, even long convoys work perfectly if you know what you are doing.

The only and pretty major Problem is when a vehicle gets stuck against an obstacle, for example in a village or when trying to get back on road after an attack, it really gets stuck. A single rock can destroy everything.

The AI driver seems to think it's still going forwards when the front wheels are spinning. It doesn't try to back up or anything to get around the obstacle.
And the rest of the convoy is lost forever.

Just a small addition to this for vehicle behaviour, apologies if its already mentioned, I did scan the posts..

When a vehicle gets stuck, or is attempting to turn around, it clearly has trouble deciding which way to go, whereas a 3 point turn style of moving would possibly cure a few of these issues.

If the driver decides that moving forward isn't getting him anywhere, which occasionally happens, then he will full lock in one direction, reverse, straighten his wheels then full lock in the same direction, thus driving straight back to where he was, repetitively.

If he was to reverse (full locked in one direction) then drive straight or full lock in the opposite direction, the majority of stuck vehicle cases would be reduced.

Also, why on earth do the AI continue to struggle forward when they have no tyres whatsoever :)

What we need is a "Convoy" in the special tab on a unit or in the formation tab on waypoints.

+1 ProGamer

after some absence from the feddback tracker i wanted to test if the ai has the same issues on altis the thread was about before it was edited.

results were (all with behaviour "none" or "safe" and limited/normal speed):

• ai vehicle crashing into several statics and buildings when there where just one start-waypoint and one end-waypoint from A to B
• ai vehicle stopping at every single "move"-waypoint when there were more than two waypoints from A to B (additional waypoints to prevent crashes)
• ai not using entire road segements (at Zaros)

at least for me there a still severe pathfinding problems when ai is driving vehicles!

since i was the one who started this thread describing the general pathfinding issues (dont know why they changed my reporter name?!) i want to make clear that this thread should still be addressing those problems in general not particulary the convoy driving (which is indeed aweful without additional commandlines like "forcespeed")!

I would make a new issue thread (especially for the "stopping-at-each-waypoint" thing) when needed. would be nice if the moderator could comment on this

I noticed that at each way-point, the AI waits to give a voice report of his location before proceeding to the next way-point. Then I think with any way-point, all AI weather on foot or in vehicles pause for a second or two.

On the more flat surfaces and with more mellow corners creating a convoy over a couple of Km distance is no problem. It´s the tight corners and narrow mountain paths with trees (side obstacles) on the side where they will get stuck.

I think that if a waypoint is given on the road from A to B the road should have the highest priority for the AI and always will try to find and follow the center of the road. Or maybe even have a special waypoint for vehicles named (how obvious) ´road´ that makes the AI change priority in pathing to exclusively follow the road. (if that at all is possible).

Also please note this feedback ticket where I talked about micro waypoints. Thus from waypoint A, A1, A2, A3, A4 to B. And vote for the ticket!
http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=6683

+1 ,for example some merkava tanks crash and get stuck making waypoints unavailable for them since they cant move. Pathfinding should be improved.

When i created a base the IA run Over the pratol of soldiers

This has been a problem with the AI since FOREVER ago. BIS PLEASE FIX!

+1, recently created a fairly large convoy mission, on game version 1.08, and this problem still exists. No need to repro as the issues I am having is the same as mentioned above by many other reporters. Mainly: AI ramming into eachother, AI crashing into buildings and objects, AI having no regard for on-foot personnel, & AI trying to overtake lead vehicles. The pathfinding does seem to be a bit improved, as they seem to follow the road for the most part and cross bridges as they should, but this is hard for me to compare as I didn't have a chance to test these things while in Alpha.

If repro is requested, I will attach the mission file, but from what I've read here, this issue seems very much present in the game's current state, even though it was reported back on 3/09/2013. I shouldn't need a script or ANY type of coding just to get my AI convoy to drive in formation to its destination without some critical (mission-breaking) issue.

Repro mission added - 'Convoy' - I've included an FSM modelled on the convoy in Adapt. I've noticed the AI struggle with bridges, frequently stopping in the middle of them. Please take a look at the mission I've uploaded, thanks ever so!

Okay, I've spent the day at this; it seems single vehicles passing over bridges are fine. No problem! Groups of vehicles, usually results in one of the vehicles in the convoy stopping on the bridge. The vehicles behind end up piling up, and then, they create such a mash up there's no way they can continue...

We acknowledge there are issues. Worse, by creating convoys one just puts all those issues into one bag, stirs and shakes em;)

Sadly we can't simply "omg bis wtf fix dem cnvoyz nao, kthxbai" :( But by fixing the fractions we'll hopefully bring some improvements.

We've found some inconsistency between Altis and Stratis roads. Btw, do you find the behavior generally a little tiny bit better on Stratis roads?

We'll check if this helps at least a bit first. (but only after the next patch - it's a simple fix, but will require some extensive testing).

Happy to help test in the next dev build if required. Just let us know when its the 'fix' is active and we will check it out and provide constructive feedback.

If you want to try out different road widths or techniques in the one patch let us know and we can test them all for you.

Is there a possibility to have a look into the path finding process? Because except for some SQF commands like <b>nearRoads</b>, I couldn't find anything, not in the pbo files or anywhere else.

I'm very interested in improving it, because I'm trying to work around the AI path finding for months now, without any success. It's like we as scripters are forced to use the path finding as-is without even having a chance to try to do make it better.

Since path finding seems to be a very annoying issue, it would be very senseful to have the community help with the path finding process.

It seems that convoys very often crash more or less together when waypoint come and they should slow down. Some vehicles cant stop so quick than others. Best act usual is when you put convoy careless, then they drive on the road. But crashing is happening, not always. So it make it hard to find reason for that.

I try add 3 vehicles (BTR-80 from RHS MOD) to the water and order them to get on the land. Sometimes all 3 get on the land, sometimes 2 get stuck, sometimes they all get stuck without me changing anything... Cant figure out why this is not happening all the time or at all. Maybe if they could back up more than 1-2m let say 10-20meter and then try with full speed it would help this i think.

when vehicles crash one another it would be nice if it could be possible to fix broken wheels, like in RHS mod if wheels get broke or shoot by somebody. Haven't seen AI fix the wheel but since those get broke all the time it would be nice too. If it is possible.

That is why AI driving is actually worse in A3.In A2 they crashed or get stuck but they had a chance to reach their destination,right now in A3 they crash or get stuck and they also break their wheels so easily resulting in disabled vehicles.
Next time you ask your AI why he didn't bring his vehicle he'll answer "I broke my wheels man". :P

Didn't know it was that bad until I started researching to see if a "ZBE_Unstuck" module would be worth the effort

Video: http://youtu.be/dcBAPpKxaNw

It seems it would be worth it.

It need to be fixed. I dont know how Dwarden have done his convoy route but me (and all users i think) have same problem with it and it looks like on my video:
http://youtu.be/05KDhWYbMBc
Still not fixed in 1.38

I see the problem will be never solved, and i dont know why. Its present since ofp and it classified as highest priority for players, and still one of main issues of non-finished game aspects, whats wrong with you BI? Take all issues on back and fix this one, then "backward" command on tanks (Ai driving problem), then take on rest of your issues is it so hard?

If it was an easy fix it would be fixed. Obviously it's more complicated than we understand.

No, its too much lines of scripts and there is no most important line. Its ai trying to pass next to obstacles, objects and EVERYTHING hwat will be detect as object (including vehicle next to you). Commanding wheeled vehicle like APC's its impossible in this game, AI drive like he likes, not obeying the orders, and die most beacuse of this. Deaar BI, try to change AI behavior to obey the orders in vehicles (FORCE IT), and AI not search some bypass over the objects, just obey order