I'm not saying the AI doesn't need an overhaul, but I think the idea is that groups are in communication with each other via radio.

Today I witnessed something even stranger,
I don't know if it's because it's domination and it could be that the AI are moded, but...

I spotted a patrol of 4 enemies walking in a "safe" movement from about 300 meters.
I started to shoot at them but my first 3 shots only impacted the ground next to their feet,
even so, they didn't seem to care or even notice they are being shot at, and continued to look "safe".
To make things worse I didn't use a silencer.

But, the second I hit someone, they were alerted and manage to spot my location with in seconds.

And to say it's communication is just wrong in my opinion, because it's clear that even if you kill
someone silently with one bullet to the head and no one saw it, they are still alerted.
What now? people will say they have heart beat sensors alarms on every soldier in the group?

-EDIT-
This game have allot of things that need to be fixed, but I am sure most people will understand
that a game at this magnitude is bound to have issues.
However I think the AI is one of the biggest issues, it just does not feel natural or humane in any way.

They are either,
very very dumb (the night showcase on regular was a joke imho,
they fired at me from 30 meters full clips but did not hit me at all)
OR
they are super AI, aimbots that can pinpoint your location from 1000 meters and shoot at you before they even turn around, all knowing all seeing with super fast reflexes and super body armor.

This is really frustrating and it breaks the game, and it's a real shame.

I'm not saying the AI doesn't need an overhaul, but I think the idea is
that groups are in communication with each other via radio.

Nothing wrong with the AI noticing it EVENTUALLY, but not instantaneously. And as I said, the guy didn't have any chance to use a radio, he just dropped dead and didn't even hear the shot.

EDIT: Just tested it, it doesn't matter if AI has a radio or not, they will know about it instantaneously even if they're butt naked.

Funny thing is, a group of players actually has to confirm that one of their own is dead by looking at the body and right clicking.

If a player is group leader, he will not know an AI is down until asking for status or giving order to the killed AI. I firmly believe same should apply for AIs - and AI team leaders should ask for status of teammates if they are far...

please fix this issue bis :(

Nothing wrong with the AI noticing it EVENTUALLY, but not instantaneously.

Agreed.

One thing I'm confused about is how everyone is getting these AI groups to stay spread out. Even if you place units far apart in the editor, they'll regroup once you launch the mission. When I made my first comment, I was under the assumption that most the time units will be too close together for this issue to matter.

One thing I'm confused about is how everyone is getting these AI groups to
stay spread out.

First you need to remove their "In Formation" state (set to "None"). That means they will be apart, but they will try to get into formation after the mission starts. Simply add a "doStop this" to their init field to keep them where they are.

Attached the sample mission. Issue still persists in latest dev build.

this needs to be addressed, my mission is impossible :(

Added another, even better example. Setup is: One member of the group is on he runway, the other is on Kamino Firing range on the other side of the island. Using Live Feed to get a PIP of the guy. Even though they don't have radios (for real this time) they know instantaneously that their partner got shot, on the other side of the world.

I suspected there was some scripting going on.

I'm wondering now why these AI need to be in the same group? If they need to share target info you could use the 'reveal' command (probably more tedious than using doStop, but just saying).

I still think it would be more versatile to have some kind of appropriate timeout on group members knowing about their fallen comrades.

"I'm wondering now why these AI need to be in the same group? If they need to share target info you could use the 'reveal' command (probably more tedious than using doStop, but just saying). "

Not the point.

The point is that they automatically know that their buddy is dead IF and ONLY IF they are in the same group. Even if they are on opposite sides of the island without any radios.

Here's a point for you: Groups stick together and share information by design. If somebody scripts them to behave differently, then they should have a good reason for asking Devs to change the way it works.

I do agree there's a valid reason to change it, for example the one that I mentioned. I just wanted to see if there were other reasons.

"Here's a point for you: Groups stick together and share information by design. If somebody scripts them to behave differently, then they should have a good reason for asking Devs to change the way it works. "

Here's one for you: Individuals do NOT have extra sensory perception. The point is that if you have, for example, a perimeter guard that NO ONE sees and you kill him WITHOUT the others noticing it, they still know. This is clearly NOT what should happen.

And for your information since you don't seem to have gotten that: There was NO scripting involved that changed anything about their behavior.

@mepwaygame
"Here's a point for you: Groups stick together and share information by design. If somebody scripts them to behave differently, then they should have a good reason for asking Devs to change the way it works. "

Picture this, you spot AI that is moving through the forest in a line formation, and you silently pick off the rear guy. Should all the others know that their rear guy is gone? Nope, they shouldn't, but they do. That is because independent of distance or means of communication, AI instantaneously knows that a group member is down.

No, mepwaygame, you're wrong. The issue here is not connected with scripting, it's discussing a flow in the base game logic - that an AI group leader instantly knows one of teammates is down, while a human player does not.
No scripting can remove this cheat ability from the game. And yes, it is "by design", but the design is wrong here.

Why this is hurting gameplay: there are cases, when a lone team member of the group or a small team (2-3 infantrymen) are separated from the main group. It should not be the case that when a stray team member is killed by a sniper from 1000 meters (where there's no sound of shot heard) the whole team instantly knows where the sniper is located. Period.

To get the 'perimeter guard' to stay put and not join his group you need use the 'doStop' command, or some other SCRIPT command. Read the posts.

I guess we should check if every group member has line-of-sight to every other group member, and maybe compute the distances between all of them too, so when you have a lot of large groups your performance suffers, even on missions where the mission designer doesn't have groups spread all over the damn map. We shouldn't even have a discussion on exactly what is needed to get the desired behavior.

Anyway, WTF? Exactly how many times do I have to say I agree with the ticket before you go away, you annoying little troll?

you spot AI that is moving through the forest in a line formation, and you silently pick off the rear guy

Silently pick off how? Did you see any of the tickets about how sound suppressors are not silencers?

How about the guy hitting the ground? Is this group deaf?

mepwaygame, with all due respect, but unless you start reading the post and understand what is going on, I suggest you cut back on the snappy remarks.

So instead of calling me an "annoying little troll", you should actually understand what I am saying. You agree with the ticket but you don't understand what it is about ?

@mepwaygame

If you don't have anything productive to add other than calling people named, please go away. Thank you.

If you set a formation's speed to "full" they won't wait for each other, and they might be way out of hearing range. Or there might be background noises, or the guy might fall on soft ground, it doesn't matter.

Okay let's try this again with no snappy remarks, hey maybe I'm being the troll...

What point have I missed?

mepwaygame >>> you annoying little troll?

Too fat. Go away, there's no food here.
Don't feed the troll.

First of all: You insisted on insulting me. Secondly, I did not call you a troll, you called me a troll.

On topic: Even if they are on different sides of the island, they know when the other has been killed. Nothing more, nothing less. This only works if they are in a group. If they are not in a group, they don't know. This is without having any means of communication (no radios).

To get back to the example with the perimeter guard, if the guard would have been in a group of it's own, it would not have alerted anyone to kill him.

The point is: Without changing any other circumstances, detection is only dependent on the grouping. If group, they know, if not grouped, they don't know.

The point you missed is that the only "scripting" involved is the dostop command, which is given ONLY to prevent the units from wandering around.

You said: "If they need to share target info you could use the 'reveal' command (probably more tedious than using doStop, but just saying". This is the reason why I think you did not understand the problem. This issue has nothing to do with scripting, it has nothing to do with the reveal command. There is a good chance that the remaining team member doesn't know about your position at all. But they do get alerted when any team member is killed, even though that should not be possible (being on the other side of the island without radio contact).

Why is this a bug that needs to be fixed? Because it makes stealth based missions pretty much moot. It is no longer a question of situation whether you can risk taking out a guy or not, you will have to ask yourself, is he grouped or not? Because if he is grouped, it doesn't matter where his buddies are, they will know. If they spread out way outside hearing range, if they are guarding a point and sent out a guy to check something, you cannot take out that guy because they will immediately know that the guy was shot.

The argument that you use scripting to alter the group's behavior is irrelevant. If you want naturally behaving AI, you will have to resort to scripting. Take BIS_fnc_taskDefend. According to its description, AI will man static defenses as well as send out patrols. Patrols will be untouchable since you cannot dispatch them - they are grouped and therefore the rest of the group will immediately know.

Another case, setting a group's formation speed to full says the individual members will not wait for the rest of the group. A DISMISS waypoint can have group members wonder off into the distance. Still, all of the group will know about any dead member, because they magically share the information.

The troll is back for one last post:

From my twisted point of view it looked like I was being patronized for trying to satisfy my curiosity and continue the discussion. Also it is clear (and has been admitted) that assumptions were made about how ignorant I was on the topic. But in spite of all this, I'm sorry I called anyone a troll. I'm the biggest troll here for commenting when I should know better.

That being said, I don't believe I missed any points or made any incorrect statements related to the game.

It's obvious I'm not adding anything so good luck with your ticket.

Thanks for pointing this out Alwarren.

I think this can be generalized to the way group members share target information (check - http://youtu.be/e-zjWzg9-PI | beta branch as of 08-22).

It is not just what triggers the sharing/communication of targets (in this case the group member killed doing the communication)

It is also the accuracy and the nodelay amount of time with which the information is shared.

I am abstaining for now to make a specific ticket for the latter, i do welcome advice from a mod.

And it is aware of who killed or shot. Especially when you're a player, enemy will ignore rest of the squad and focus it's fire on you even if it didn't seen you shooting.

Try with the grenade launcher, couple ai groups and enemy Ifrit 300 meters away. Shot grenade launcher towards Ifrit (as close as possible) - Ifrit will smack you down but will ignore rest of the squads/soldiers.

@Alwarren
"Why is this a bug that needs to be fixed? Because it makes stealth based missions pretty much moot. It is no longer a question of situation whether you can risk taking out a guy or not, you will have to ask yourself, is he grouped or not? Because if he is grouped, it doesn't matter where his buddies are, they will know."

It's actually even worse than this. The AI does not have to be grouped for this to be a problem. The AI only has to have seen one of their guys in order to become completely aware of it (i.e. know exactly when it dies by enemy fire).

So for example. If the enemy has setup a roadblock and one of their patrols walk by, you can't eliminate the guards in the roadblock without alerting the patrol. Even if the patrol is beyond visual/audio range.

You're saying if one group walks by another group of the same side, then walks out of earshot/sight, they will know when that group they passed gets killed? If that's what you're saying then you're mistaken. I think possibly you're over-estimating the effectiveness of suppressors.

@JoeOBrien
http://youtu.be/d9XEHQBqikU

AI in a group automatically share the information within the group currently.

This change would require quite some engine adjustment I assume.
Still it needs to be done at some point.

See also CIT for good various tickets on this.

Confirmed.

Totally agree with this ticket. The AI is meant to be one of big features of ArmA and this bug makes them unrealistic and limits the ability to create certain types of missions/tasks and the ability to create almost any type of mission is meant to be another big selling point of ArmA.

So BIS, please assign this and fix it ASAP.

This should now be fixed on the Development Branch.

The AI should no longer enter the combat mode prior to finding about a squad member KIA.

(Won't probably appear in the upcoming Stable update and will stay only in Dev for some time to allow for catching of any emergent issues)

Nice to see this addressed!

Mass-closing all resolved issues not updated in the last month.

Please PM me in BI Forums (http://forums.bistudio.com/member.php?55374-Fireball) if you feel your bug was closed in error.