Upvoted! It's frustrating to engage an unaware group of enemies on medium/long range and after your first shot falls they just turn right around and kill you within 2-3 shots.

Yes, the AI reacts too quickly, but what is more frustrating is that the AI can "see" through obstacles. You can stand in the thickest bushes, being completely silent, the AI just picks you out of it, if the AI would have a X-Ray vision.

I agree with OP. They are like legal aimbotters in the ARMA series.

Ditto.

Quite well known, the AI can see through heavy smoke and other solid obstacles with perfect 20/20 vision, even at night! Apparently, this is still present within the latest developer versions.

AI have way to high of a accuracy, they can snipe out chopper pilots at 1,000m with 1 shot and get a perfect headshot every time. They can also see behind small brick walls and see 100% through Grass.

I would like to investigate but I need much better repro. Please create a simple mission in which you support your statement and I will look into it.

The Infantry showcase on Veteran and Expert is a good place to start. It demonstrates 1) extreme AI shooting accuracy from any range even when suppressive fire is applied, and 2) AI shooting through dense vegetation at you even when it is unlikely that they had a clear line of sight to you at any previous time. But I haven't tried the Infantry showcase in a couple of weeks, so it is possible that this change (04-04-2013, Fixed: AI no longer fires on targets it does not see (but which are reported by other group members)) has helped.

I don't think there's much argument within the community with this issue.

I can see it is extremely evident, enemy can see through vegetation and likely other obstacles or very apparent they are equipped with infrared scopes on their rifles.

This is extremely evident within night missions, and one big reason I hear from ground troops complaining they dislike playing the night missions. We can't see them, yet they can see us.

This might also be associated with being able to see troops better from ravines or lower levels of forested areas, versus moving down from higher terrain and looking down into forests. In other words, enemy within ravines can easily spot troops on forested hills, versus the opponents looking down through forested hills into the ravine.

As for me, I enjoy the night missions, as I pilot and, toss glow sticks and fire flares for troops with scoped rifles. I tend to avoid going into forests during nighttime due to this.

Yes, amazing it never gets addressed.. Almost if they only have script kiddies working on the game, or they don't care.

One thing is evident, they don't document anything for its fanbase. They have no one to clarify any questions on anything technical. I recall in early Arma, there was a thread that explained difficulty control on AI.. it was like setting 0.9949923194 and 0.0474727323 for different aim, skill control.. these posts vanished from the internet, and the game has suffered since. I don't understand why they don't want to educate their fanbase which would only grow a huge fan base of hardcore players.

look at the vote ups.. 100% GREEN, insane numbers complaining for years about this.. nothing ever changes...

I actually want to go back and play original Arma demo , thats when infantry was the shit....

Create a simple mission? Play the game for 2 minutes. ANY mission.

First shot hits by the AI with assault weapons at >800m are not realistic to begin with. Identifying the exact position of a shooter at 800m+ who is using a suppressed weapon and laying prone amongst dense vegetation is almost impossible within the 2 seconds it takes the AI.

This is probably one of the most detrimental issues to the game, and it seems to be getting little to no attention.

As I pointed out in another AI topic, "just play the game" is not a sufficient repro method. Simple, easily testable repro missions that showcase a problem are what get bugs fixed, not snarky comments on the bug tracker.

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

AI seems to be able to very easily see through foliage/bushes/tree branches/leaves.

I was playing a coop mission online and engaging the enemy from 300+ meters because getting any closer meant death no matter what. At this range I was able to take down one enemy before a slew of very accurate bullets came flying at me. I managed to avoid death and ducked down the hill in an attempt to break their view and try another attack. I crawled back to a new firing position and no sooner than the enemy was in view I was engaged again. This time fate was not on my side and I was killed almost instantly despite being in a new position about 50m away and remaining at least 300m for the enemy position.
Despite leaving my old position and low crawling to the new position the now alerted enemy was able to engage and kill me in mere seconds faster than I could aim down my scope.

I just noticed, Ballistic penetration of bushes (foliage) adjusted.

Developer Change Log:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?149636-Alpha-Development-branch-changelog&p=2400656#post2400656

Hacking AI, They shoot us from 300+ meters within a few shots, if not the first...They spin around and shoot at us if we sneak up to them... Not only that, When they go prone at 300+ meters they disappear into the ground making them invisible

^The AI is worse at shooting you from long distances compared to most ppl youll meet in MP. Imo the AI`s ability to shoot is actually very good as it is now.

The problem here is that the AI is way to good at spotting people, both inside and outside of a firefight. If this get fixed I would bet that the AI would seem a lot more fair and be more interesting to play against.

Also, in some areas the AI is actually not good enough. They react way to slow at close ranges and is also way to slow at finding cover when fired upon. This hampers gameplay imo and is not so fun

I think they put AI in the same level as some veteran players. If I spot someone a 700m I can easily take him down in a few shots. The fact is: IF you move after shooting they'll find you faster.

I run into this issue also, AI simply can pin point you instantly the first second the shot is fired even in foliage or long range.

Additionally, AI with NO NVG's can track you in pitch black darkness and continue firing at you at over 600 meters, even when your not firing or using any sort of illumination device. It's terrible.

Yeah, while the aiming isn't THAT bad, the spotting seems utterly broken.

Yesterday I was playing a mission where the OPFOR AI was set to 0.35 and BLUFO AI to 0.4.

While patrolling with an AI squad (me as SL) one of the soldiers reported "Enemy Infantry 1.5 clicks (1500m!) west. Looking in that direction showed a big mountain at about 700m. Checking the map to see where they were, and found out that they were in the valley BEHIND THE MOUNTAIN!

So it doesn't seem to be an issue with AI skill levels being to high. It rather seems like AI vision is X-Ray superpowered at long distances.

Worthy to note is that AI spotting skills seems to work perfectly fine at Close Quarters. If I sneak around a corner and see an enemy 10m infront of me, it takes a second or two for him to detect me and shoot me. Just enough time for me to drop him first. This on the same skill levels as above.
So it feels rather easy, which is exactly how 0.35 should feel like.

Running headlong around a corner still gets me pretty much instakilled, which is also as it should be I think.

Won't even try to play it any more until its fixed. Being a sniper now makes it even more comical. How the hell in the world it is possible wearing ghillie suit, suppressed MXM, being spotted and SNAP shot killed from say 200-300m? Seriously?

Ditto Bozon. Some use a sniper mod so they can shoot greater than three miles out.

I played against Veteran 1.0 Super AI today in a big fight in Agia Marina with me and some AI down in the city with enemies coming over the mountains in all directions.

The AI did very well. I didn't notice anything wrong. It shot well at many hundred meters of distance and was also quick to react once inside the village and still I didn't think it was overpowered. Why? Because I still managed to shoot probably about 10 of them before they got me so they're still worse than I am!

The AI does have significant issues at times though and I can imagine not everyone wanting to play the game this difficult. Most people are probably used to the early 2000s shooters with a draw distance of 150 meters and don’t enjoy being shot down at 800.

And I guess it is somewhat unrealistic that the AI can spot you so quickly. Unless you spot tracers or barrel smoke it is really hard to locate enemy shooters as a player.

Haven't extensively playtested AI.

I was in a wetsuit, at night, over 300m away from an OPFOR Fireteam(who didn't have NVG's. They saw me, and killed me. I never fired a shot, was in the shadows, and it was an overcast sky. I went back into the editor and made sure they did not have NVG's. None of the soldiers were snipers either. Yet they saw me at over 300m away.

On the flip side, I've seen enemie soldiers walk right by me at about 10m and never see me while I was in the shadows in a wetsuit.

I've also seen enemy soldiers run past my vehicle, while we were engaging targets, and never take a shot at us. They weren't running to cover either. They ran to the middle of the airfield, stop and stand looking in a random direction. We mowed them down easily.

Exactly what I see here too RTEK!

But they did adjust the night vision parameters for the RED team recently.

Probably should retest the wetsuit again while in pitch dark conditions with enemy not wearing night vision, and verify with the developer version the enemy can no longer see.

This happens all of the time to me, in various circumstances.

I'm playing on regular difficulty with a friend, we climb up a hill to overview a simple mission I created where we have to destroy a chemical weapons box. There's a fireteam guarding the box and a fireteam patrolling around it. We're around 300 meters away with suppressors, and we begin to fire. We manage to kill maybe 3 or 4, when everyone goes prone, and instantly shoots us in very limited number of shots.

The same really accurate spotting and shooting applies when I do water missions and have to swim up on the coast. The AI just instantly spots me and suppresses me in the water until I need to swim out of their line of sight, and by then, the stealth element is compromised.

Oh Boy! This will keep us occupied until Beta! I'm as giddy as a little boy and can't wait to see the slaughter. ;-)

Alpha Development branch changelog (17-06-2013)
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?149636-Alpha-Development-branch-changelog&p=2416451#post2416451

Added: AI is now better able to adjust shots at longer distances
Fixed: AI is better in choice of weapons

(@#$@#$ dang aimbot cheaters @$#@#$)

I also experimented with the AI and they are obviously cheaters.
I put three enemy rifleman 750 meters from my position which was a nice safety spot inside the woods and when I killed the first one with a suppressed m14 ebr, the other two just go prone and turning exactly the direction where I was.
They didn't shot back, but they known my exact position. In this case when I shoot from far distance the AI should search for cover, not just go prone and pinpoint me from 750 meters!!!
The AI also hear you inhumanly good from relatively far distance or maybe they just simply track you through the walls. I really hope that some AI improvement finally will happen in Arma3.

I was actually shot in shallow water from the AI patrolling the base in the SCUBA showcase. I really don't think that you can see that far below the surface at such a angle (less than 20 degrees), and at 100+m.

This time I was shot dead from 200m+ by two shots of a ROOK 40 PISTOL!!! while I was leaning out from cover. - no comment
Needs SERIUS revision!

Almost forget: Enemy precision was lowered to 0.35 (Enemy skill: 0.7 on veteran)

Upvoted, the AI is f*cking ridiculous. They snipe you from any distance with the most close quarters weapons in the game. I created my own thread just now on this but I upvoted yours as well.

FIX THIS CRAP PLEASE!!!

Upvoted. Now, with the following I don't want to whine about the game itself, nor absolutelyam I asking to casualize it like happens in other franchises. Still, fixing the AI is quite urgent. I understand that there is a difficulty option, but the enemy's super-awareness acts as a game breaker at any setting above 0.60, and still (regarless od the work underlying it) feels very clunky no matter the difficulty. Enemies can pinpoint moving targets from 400+ metres, seem to ignore lightning and vegetation and can use telepathy within 200 metres range. However, enemies seem quite confident of this as getting cover is the last of their priorities. The best response I had from pinned down enemies is them running in some poorly chosen direction and then stopping. In plain open field.
It is also worth noting that the supehuman skills of the enemy at long distance are somewhat "counterbalanced" by their utter lack of spirit in close quarters. Enemies will oblserve the most rigorous trigger discipline even when the player is at 40 meters from them, so that the player usually has plenty of time to reload. This becomes particularly ridiculous when turning around is involved, as this seems to put the poor enemy AI in crisis.
Such things are worthy of a B series FPS, certainly not of ArmA.
Finally, it may be lack of teamplay on my side but friendly AI has problems holding to their guts. I can hardly finish any mission (given I'm not the team leader) without my team being entirely wiped out.

The friendly AI remind you of the Keystone Cops, or AI sleeping on the job? ;-)

Agree that this has been a bugbear in the Arma series since Cold War Assault. It makes missions against AI that involve night moves or an element of stealth (black-ops sort of thing) feel particularly tedious to play.

The infantry showcase is a good example of the many frustrations that the AI can cause as described by @OMAC.

More realistic behaviour by the AI under fire in different situations that take proper account of range, weapon type, lines of sight, cover etc. would enhance the game enormously.

As it has been since A3A was released, the Infantry Showcase being unplayable on Veteran+ is such a glaring, massive screwup that I cannot believe that it hasn't been the primary focus of A3 development. IMO, all development should be stopped until this gargantuan f**kup is completely fixed. If expert A2 hipsters can't have fun playing the Infantry Showcase of a supposedly infantry-focused game, then who can?

The friendly AI in the showcase are so woefully inadequate that they may as well not even be there. 90+% of the time, the player is killed by enemy he cannot see, often through vegetation. Even if he sees them, it is very, very difficult to neutralize them because of sun glare, inadequate weapon optics magnification, poor illumination on shadowed, south-facing slope, excessive recoil of weapon, etc. etc. If enemy AI spot you from any range and you don't have them directly in your sights and are ready to fire, you are dead, period. I often feel that BIS is playing a cruel joke on players with that mission on harder difficulties, even though I know that cannot be true.

A good QA/QC benchmark for playability is that if a moderately-skilled player cannot consistently finish a mission in 10-20 tries, the mission, or the AI skill/shooting accuracy, must be tweaked. This is a "realistic" game, not a hardcore VBS2 milsim, so it must be fun to play at all difficulty levels.

I agree with everything.
The new showcases demonstrate perfectly how over powered the enemy AI is compared to the player and friendly AI.
AI spots you easily through everything, be it fog, vegetation or distance. Their accuracy is brutal as well, even at far distances. They not only managed to spot me, but hit me as well from the air base, on the "SUPPORTS" scenario, despite the fact I was behind a stone wall, near the starting area. This was on Veteran difficulty.
I have hard time completing the 'NIGHT' scenario, even on regular, because it takes ages to eliminate AI near vehicles, thanks to the absolutely useless optics and the fact, that AI have no trouble tracking me in a dark, foggy valley.
The 'COMMAND' showcase is a testament of how inept your team mates are. They get slaughtered, because they simply refuse to use cover and they seldom feel like engaging enemies unless you specifically tell them.
Same goes for the armored vehicle in the 'COMBINED ARMS' showcase. Most of the time the enemy AI immediately destroys it with a rocket. It's almost like they can predict where it's coming from. Unfortunately same cannot be said about my simple team mates, who don't even bother to put a rocket through the enemy APC, even if it is happily mowing their team mates down, just about 100 meters in front of them. Even if our APC survives it doesn't really want to partake in defeating the enemy attack. It just loiters around, only opening fire if some enemy dude walks directly into it's line of sight.
The superhuman AI, with all seeing eyes, equipped with seemingly recoilless superweapons is annoying even in multiplayer.
Please make them a bit more human and less Terminator.

I was on a user mission just now. Night mission. Enemy did not have nvg's. I know because I watched them from a ridge. I was behind a bush, out of their line of sight. I see them walking about 20m in front of me. They weren't looking in my direction. They suddenly started shooting at me.

It's like the A.I. don't have eyes, but are drawn to you if you are in line of sight(bushes dont count as cover). However, not line of sight with their eyes but their head. Like their field of view is set to 360 degrees and can see through darkness.

AI detection distances are based on real life distances, they should never be balanced for gameplay sake as this is a simulator first. up to 1km-1,3km you should be able to see a moving squad, but not identify them at first. Which ARMA AI shouldn't do either, the squad leader might take out binoculars or one of the men with a scope can identify the target. Engaging the enemy at 600m is nothing uncommon in a real combat situation and shouldn't be in ARMA. You are putting yourself in a disadvantage when you are moving through the forest with a stationary platoon of enemies. Try standing still yourself, having a platoon of enemies move through the forest and you'll be able to see them moving around much faster than if you were the one running.

Like RTEK, in a night mission ("night" showcase), AI soldiers spotted me when I was in the lowest crouch stance, and killed me very easily, from a long distance. Without NV Googles.
Had to prone to get unnoticed, which could be realistic in day time, but not by night IMO.
After engagement, I tried to move from cover to cover, but AI shot me at the second I moved, always by night and from a long distance.

Just turned the game off, so frustrated, wearing a gillie suit and a silenced rifle, in the afternoon, saw a squad of soldiers and shot 3 rounds off, I was in cover and bam dead before I could do anything....

They were about 700mtrs away, it a absolute joke..

Firing 2 shots at a target 300m away with a suppressed MX and they turn knowing exactly where I'm at makes no sense. I'm not even using tracer mags. Target wasnt even looking in my direction, yet he knew exactly where I was. It just ruins the gameplay.

I recently tried Cold War Assault and the A.I. was fine, though still very quick to aim and shhot in CQB and reluctant to shoot at long distances. Military weapons have effective ranges. These might be increased by better optics, but every firearm has bench-rested bore accuracy, then the accuracy resulting from the length of the sight rail from from to rear (tge longer the better), and then the accuracy resulting from how the weapon handles tge recoil, and then how tge user handles the recoil, which varies with posture, weather, etc. Pistols have poor accuracy because of their very short barrels/bores, their very short sight rails, and the weapon they and their users handle recoil. There should be a significant bullet drop with distance.

In OFP it was possible to get through a firefight by letting your A.I. teammates do all the fighting. This should still be possible.

On the latest developer snapshots, the AI now look and dance around sort of wildly after taking shots from a suppressed TRG? with SOS scope from a distant range.

As long as the rounds are spaced apart, but when shooting rapidly or when the last tracers rounds are presented, they then definitely spin in your direction and start shooting back with realistic precision.

Need more info: behavior not human, too accurate firing, never panic, laser eyes trough bushes.

Need more info? what about?

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=8204

start arma 3 and play a mission there's your repro...

I 1000% agree. The AI can see people with hawk like vision. I have a mission where I am the AH-99 pilot starting in the Military range compound in Agia Marina. At 0030, it is pitch black, and the flood lights are on lighting the area. My gunner spots an enemy infantryman 2.0km away near the base of the hill near Camp Rogain. WAY too unrealistic. First off, his sight would be limited to the area in the lighted area. As anyone knows when it is dark, lighted areas kill your night vision. Even if the gunner was using the optics in the bird, he would never have been able to see them.

Another thing is that the pilot is calling out targets for the gunner when I am playing as the gunner. If anyone can see in the pitch black it is the gunner with thermal vision in his optics. This seems way backwards and unrealistic. The pilot might have "operational" control on firing on targets, but he would never be able to see targets unless spotted by the gunner.

No clue why anyone would down vote this, you have to set the AI to 1/3 of their skill level for the game to be playable with AI units. I was playing the Night Ops showcase, and got spotted 1 km away while prone and observing enemies staring at a camp fire in pitch darkness. While I don't want the AI to be blind and deaf, I don't want to fight terminators. This is a critical issue that can determine whether or not the game will be playable. Things like "last known position" should be implemented, and maybe the AI could guess where the player would go based on what direction they came from. It's definitely doable.

I set this to need more info though I can't find the info here. Please understand that play the game is not a valid info for us. I just tried the night showcase on expert difficulty and it was perfectly playable for me. I wasn't spotted on 1 km away while prone and I really tried. I just would like to stress that this discussion will lead us nowhere and believe me, I would like to understand in which cases is the AI too precise. Now all I can see is "play the game". I'm really sorry but you can't help the game with info like this. Also I would like to add that AI uses last knwon position as someone here stated. I'm still patiently waiting for better repro situation especially after we nerfed the values of ranges and accuracy.

Thanks ghost for the reply, try a simple repro which I will explain below and see how you manage with that..

Make sure you do this on every difficulty and skill level
Place unit 1 side of runway and you on the other
Run towards enemy until he spots/shoots/kills you
Take note of distance and also try at different times of day/night

Maybe this will help with the investigation

Yhea ghost there is the isue. AI is compleetly blind at night. You can wlak next to them whitout them knowing you are there. But at day they will see you from 1 KM away whit ease and shootyou whit 2 shots if your in bad luck.

Ghost means you should make a mission in the editor where you can 100% of the time reproduce the issue without fail, and upload it to this ticket.

@EmperorJon: are you aware that they use radios? I don't see anything bad about that one man spot you and whole squad engage you simultaneously.

@noah895: Maybe he silouhetted against ocean or sky, or maybe you have big ratio Friendly skill / Enemy skill. What were your options during the mission?

For me it's playable and balanced when I set skill 1.0 to both sides.

GhostOne: "I'm still patiently waiting for better repro situation especially after we nerfed the values of ranges and accuracy."

When were those values nerfed? Is that change in a changelog?

Ok, I found the root cause, why everybody is exclaiming and why GhostOne doesn't find any issue by simply testing the AI in the editor or even in MP:

Basically every popular COOP mission in A3 MP is currently using BIS_fnc_spawnGroup. And in this function "createUnit" is used for spawning soldiers with default skill setting 0.

For spawning vehicles, above function calls BIS_fnc_spawnVehicle, which also sets skill value 0 for both "createUnit" or "createVehicle" calls.

Originally someone probably thought, a skill value of 0 uses the default, but it doesn't; it sets the spawned units' skill to 1.

To illustrate the full extent I attached screenshots with passages highlighted within the functions, plus a repro mission which demonstrates that unit skill is 1, when createUnit is called with value 0.

^ ^ Would that affect the SP showcases? The lethal AI accuracy, and shooting through vegetation, are better displayed in the Infantry showcase than in the Night showcase on Veteran+ difficulty.

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=117

Is also very similar to this, it might explain some other AI issues people are having.

being a infantryman in the us army i no what its like trying to engage a target at 300 to 1000 meters. yet in the game the AI can spot you with in seconds and pretty much hit you with the first shot. even when sniping from a long distance. In real life even trying to see a pop up target on a range with a cco at 300 meters is hard.

In my experience, its not in those super popular "Ahoy World" servers that set the AI to where they shoot you at 500 meters, I am an editor myself and the AI wont shoot back at 300 meters with there spot distance at the highest and skill level bar to the top. My advice? make your own missions and stop playing ahoy world grind servers.
This post really frustrates me because Arma players are only playing that same stupid mission

I dare setting this to "resolved", as in my observation most of the mayhem is created by setting AI skill to 1, by what I've described in #12669.

OMAC, if you find AI is too good at night (as in the showcase you mentioned), I suggest we create a different ticket. This one is too generic and has become obsolete, IMO.

Biggest problem I have with this is the effects of incoming fire. Tried the combined arms showcase a little bit ago and picked up an LMG as I was low on ammo. Got to the town and set about repelling the support troops. Caught a machinegunner out in the open. From prone, I fired a few rounds his way....he went prone and started stitching me up. Upon taking the first hit I start doing the chaingun cha-cha whereas I can clearly see my rounds dancing all around him....until the first one struck me of course. Then I'm looking at the dirt, sky, my shoulder, etc while my target (who did actually go down), just laser'd me in two with his LMG in a sustained burst. This was at about 200m or a little under, I had only half of my body visible from behind a rock (rifle up next to it basically).

One other thought comes to mind concerning night time. Us friendlies at night require five to ten seconds to identify enemy from friendlies, especially when within close range such as a few feet to 100 or so feet. Whereas the enemy require no delay with identification and just shoot.

I'm not sure if this has been fixed or considered, or if it's assumed the enemy are just doing drugs causing them to shoot first.

Streaks, sounds like a different problem, please search for existing tickets and if there's none, file a new one.

rogerx, about the same; night time is a completely new factor; please create a new ticket, if there's no existing.

Since I won't have access to a test computer for the next week or so, I'll wait to open a new bug since I'll want to verify before hand.

Bug #12183, "AI Detect You Without Even Looking" appears extremely relevant and similar to my nighttime identification issue.

Mass closing resolved tickets from last month.