Had this happen 4 times today

had to hold my fire for this reason several times

Are you team leader? If so, order your units to stop or go low. If not, don't deviate from your formation.

Ai has always be stupid like this unfortunately. Regardless of where you are in formation the ai should adhere to basic fire discipline.

Whether or not Im the Team Leader (which I am) the AI should not run in front of eachother or in front of players when attempting to move or follow.

There were two big problems with Arma2, controls and an inept AI- the controls have been (mostly) fixed and there's no reason the AI should still be this dumb.

I've had this happen, as a team leader, reacting to contact in both Arma 2 and the Alpha of Arma 3. Even a simple check, initiated by the player's weapon being fired, would help. In other words, if the player's weapon is fired then for X seconds the AI avoids crossing in front of the player. Once X seconds times out, if there hasn't been another shot fired then the AI could cross in front again. Not a perfect solution, but it'd go a long way towards helping fix the problem and it's prob pretty easy.

Oh yeah, and ideally make that true for laser designators being "fired" as well... I haven't done it in this release (but if it happens with rifles I see no reason it wouldn't with laser designators), but nothing is more ridiculous than having Pvt SNAFU meander happily into the targeting beam right after an aircraft has released its ordinance, guiding a JDAM right onto your position for an epic team kill.

There is a bigger problem here, at what point does the AI decide to pivot around behind you and all other friendlies ? Imagine your Formation is Vee or Arrowhead with a Squad of 8, how does that work Passing behind you, to get to the position, especially if you move again in a different Compass orientation before all your friendly forces get to the correct Relative position.

You will have soldiers constant running across you back as you move 180 degrees in Orientation which will cause you all to be bunched up?

"So you quickly face North in Arrow head, take a few steps forward, then turn 90 degrees left, and a few steps forward (so you are now facing West), then you turn 90 degrees left and a few steps foward (finally facing South). Now all you troops will be Dozy-Dohing around each others Line of fire and get horrendously confused"

Alternativerly

"Quickly Run a few steps North, 180 and run a few steps south and see if you can flip the formation and see if they couldn't cross infront of one another how would they achieve it?"

They all have to pass behind each others Line of fire to get to the relative position without crossing infront of another Friendly Soldiers Line of Fire. Try and draw it out on a piece of paper..It would be a bit crazy especially in Vee formation.

This is usually an issue, for me, from a fixed firing position (in fact, it just happened again today and from a position of cover). I'm behind an H-barrier or rock, have been in place for a relatively long period of time - so this isn't some instant react to contact situation with people moving to cover- I'm looking down the optic of my weapon putting sustained groups of shots into a target and the idiot AI walks right into my bullets. This happens a hell of a lot more than it should and sometimes with whole groups of AI during an engagement.

I don't really have a problem with the AI crossing in front of me on the move. And during the first few moments of a contact, I clear the arc in front of my weapon to make sure no-one is likely to be in my line of fire because I expect things to be a little chaotic with players/AI reacting to the contact. But once I've done that and I'm sighting down the sights, or especially the optic, my view is restricted to the point where I can't see Pvt SNAFU get up and wander into my bullets until it's too late.

If it really can't be fixed, or reduced, then at least alter the scoring system to award us points for fragging those idiots. OR even better, alter the voice acting to play something other than "Watch your fire"- maybe "Awesome someone finally shot that moron." :-).

mwnciboo maybe you shouldnt be taking a few steps, turning 90 degrees, taking a few steps and turning again. Sounds like you have some issues with orientation if you're doing that my friend and if thats the case dont be a squad leader.

For players moving normally however, this can be fixed by having the AI detect line of fire between 0 and maybe 25 meters or so. And yes, regardless of your formation they will have to run back behind everyone in the squad if they have to move, just like if it was real life because they do not want to be shot.

@Cypher

The whole point of testing is to identify things like this, it ruins immersion if you just happen to do these things, and all the AI start running randomly around?

Again with the "Just like Real life" comments - Is any AI out there right now able to simulate Human Intelligence? NO. So why is everyone so superficial when they say "Well the AI should do this!", with no regard for the actually reality.

It's like writing to Ford and saying "You know what you should do Ford? Make a Road car for under $10000 that can do 400mph".

There is a massive issue in all Games, but particularly in Massive Sandbox Games like ARMA with Contextualised AI, they don't fundamentally understand the World they occupy. Therefore you need Thousands of Rules for them to obey "If X do Y, If A got-to C, If D equals False then execute script F".

AI will never be seamless, and adding yet more complex rules to their behaviour will complicate it further and break other rules. We will solve one problem only to cause another, Like troops stacking up to enter a Vehicle will then dozy-doh around each other rather than entering vehicle.

We need to stop with this continuous "AI should do this or this!" and actually think about the complexities of what we are trying to achieve.

It's identifying these issues that is exactly what ALPHA testing is about, hence why I was moving in those ways I outlined above, to test the AI responses in the given scenario.

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@mwnciboo

Yes again with the "Just like Real life" because ArmA is a SIMULATOR! It should be as realistic as possible and we should want to add as much as possible.

About your idea of them needing thousands of rules. NO DUH, this would be another rule for them to NOT walk in front of players or other AIs.

And you must have missed when I said they should do this WHEN POSSIBLE. No one is saying the game has to break when you confuse them. If they CAN avoid walking into a line of fire, they SHOULD. Why are you trying to over complicate this?

Look- it's not our job to consider the total feasibility or dependencies that would result in fixing an issue. We're not qualified to make those judgments or criticisms, the dev team is. They work with the engine, they probably know the code well enough that they're sick of it by now, and they're the ones who have the hands-on daily task of implementing fixes features etc.

If the dev team reads these things and decides something isn't feasible for whatever reason- then fair enough. It's their game, it's their job and I know they know this stuff inside-out- esp compared to someone who doesn't work with this code daily. What they don't have time or the ability to do, is run the Alpha/Beta through the kind of trials that a community of players can run it through and then document what happens.

It's great that people are thinking/caring about this stuff so much that they worry about possible dependencies or complications of fixes... But those complications are best weighed by the people who're in charge of hammering the code out and know for sure what those issues are likely to be.

In other words, it's not worth *us* arguing about when it's the dev team who gets to argue about these things.

@BallisticChicken

This is where you and I part ways.

It is very much our job to consider feasibility. This isn't a Blue skies thinking exercise, where budget, time and Engine constraints do not apply.

We have to test the Alpha and refine that which we think can be done better, and potentially how the suggestions we make could be implemented.

We cannot just say "Do this, do that, or do the other" because we will become disappointed as our suggestions are not grounded.

Alot of the stuff on this Tracker is "Nice to have in an Ideal situation" but in alot of cases we have to acknowledge that much of it will not or cannot happen due to the constraints of budget.

We cannot simply push this all onto the DEV's and say "You should sort this out and you come up with the SOlutions". There are 8300+ issues on the tracker, even if DEV's spent only 10mins thinking about each issue that would be 1383 Hours just to review these, not even to implement or begin sorting the issues out.

It is upto us, to help them, this is in Alpha which means it's far beyond the Blue Skies stage and we should look to support everything they have done thus far and suggest "Feasible Solutions" not pie in the sky high level stuff.

Anything that will involves significant re-coding the Engine, AI etc is frankly not going to happen.

The Key Milestone for BIS will clearly be BETA release.

Re-writing the AI will jeopardize this miles stone, so is extremely unlikely to happen.

I work in Security Software Development and believe me, feasibility, resource and Project goals will always trump "Nice to have".

@mwnciboo

Just stop for a minute and realize that it's not your decision on what the devs do or don't decide to put into the game or why they can or can't.

Also realize that the AI in ArmA should be one of the very top priorities, therefor the idea of adding a new function that will fix a horrible behavior should be taken seriously. This isn't just a "oh cool we should add this". It's actually a big deal to make the AI as good as they can be.

It's also not like it would break the game to have this in place; if the AI need to go in front of someone else then they still can, but those are very rare situations. Please stop trying to hold back this game and just let it reach it's potential dude.

If you cared about ArmA and actually have played ArmA for as long as I have you would understand how annoying it is to have them run in front of you or even stand in front of you.

"If you cared about ArmA and actually have played ArmA for as long as I have you would understand how annoying it is to have them run in front of you or even stand in front of you."

Don't say this, it's condescending and immature....I've been playing this game since it was Operation Flashpoint and was released via Codemasters in 2001 and I have racked up thousands of hours. I even used the Military Version VBS in my military days.

"Just stop for a minute and realize that it's not your decision on what the devs do or don't decide to put into the game or why they can or can't."

You are labouring under the misapprehension that you can determine exactly what the Dev's do. This isn't the case, if you make a good solid case for a change, it is both feasible and logical you are much more likely to see it implemented.

There are huge constraints on the DEV's in terms of time and resources, you simply cannot keep re-visiting things over and over. Nothing is ever perfect, games are never truly finished, the same as with most software, it is usually abandoned at a point where it is stable.

"just let it reach it's potential dude" is a very nice phrase of saying nothing of any value. Understand this, this is a game produced for profit, this isn't a human being educating themselves or trying to improve themselves. Therefore the amount of time that DEVS can devote to this, is finite.

Would you like to see 1000 Bugs fixed or a complete re-writing of the AI? Because these are the kind of decisions on a limited budget you have to take as developers.

I guess that's why a lot of people have donated with the Supporter package to help the devs do as much as they can huh?

I am not determining what the devs do, however, it appears they too believe this is something they want to work on since this report has been assigned to a dev. I guess I must have made it "feasible and logical" enough.

Now as much as I love to argue with you, I'm finished so you can continue but it wont do you any good. I tried reasoning with you but all you want is to be right and try to hold back the game. Sure I want bugs to be fixed, but I also want progress in this series and BIS believes in making the game as good as it can be and now is my chance to help them by suggesting new features and ideas.

@mwnciboo

"There are huge constraints on the DEV's in terms of time and resources, you simply cannot keep re-visiting things over and over. Nothing is ever perfect, games are never truly finished, the same as with most software, it is usually abandoned at a point where it is stable."

If that's the case, what's the point of this point of this feedback site in the first place? While it's true that there is no such thing as a "perfect" game, that doesn't mean that we as players can't help improve the game by sending the DEV's our thoughts and ideas for the game.

"Would you like to see 1000 Bugs fixed or a complete re-writing of the AI? Because these are the kind of decisions on a limited budget you have to take as developers."

I wanna see 1000 AI Bugs fixed. I haven't noticed the other bugs.

It won't require a full re-write of the AI. Adding one rule to the AI to make them avoid walking in front of you isn't going to break the game and needs to be put in for the release.

I have noticed all of about 10 bugs in the AI, and they all have reports on them so they're getting fixed. What I also see is these silly AIs running in front of me and my fellow squad mates at such annoying times and while it does not happen constantly, it happens often enough to notice and often enough to say hey this needs to be fixed.

I haven't even noticed this 'bug' as I'm really anal about moving my AI about carefully (probably because of stuff like this). I'm not sure how much of an easy fix it is though, because now if an AI moves under fire it's gotta check the positions & orientation of every other squad member. Unless it's just checking against the player? I hope so - I mean why waste the processor cycles when the AI will get shot by SOMEBODY whether they're friendly or not (you gotta stop caring if you play this long enough). I'd rather see them not sit there and take bullets in the foot until dead while they're behind cover.

It isn't a bug, it's a lack of functionality in what is supposed to be a mil-sim. I have dealt with it since the old Flashpoint in 2001. And I think it's about time they stop walking in front of me. They dont even need to check for other AI's lines of fire, just players because that's where the problem exists. And it wouldnt cause any issues with them finding cover, so I dont quite understand why you even mentioned that. I clearly stated above that they should be aware of a line of fire at all times, and avoid if possible. **if possible** meaning hey guess what if theres a dire emergency or no possible way to get to where you told them to go without crossing in front of you, then, and only then, they are allowed to.

Well luckily for you it's assigned. Sorry that bit about cover was just me mentioning a different AI problem that I notice way more than this. I thought maybe we were talking about the same game, and you'd understand :) But apparently not because you only noticed about 10 AI bugs.

Damn mwnciboo got me talking about bugs :/

It might just be a parameter tweak, from time to time they appear to follow the rule and expected behaviour.

Issue closed as obsolete. If you encounter this problem again, please create another ticket. Thank you.