AI plan doubts

[LongLeftFlank]

Yes, that's true, but it works only if there aren't other units in the same AI group that are already on the map and already executing the orders. The new units have evidently "missed the bus" on the order chain and merely sit there, even when new orders arise with timing at both ends that postdates their arrival.

This wouldn't be an issue for me if there were more AI groups than 8.

[Frankster65]

bump for reference again.

[LongLeftFlank]

...to get to a destination if they have a choice, even if it means running around an entire block in plain view of the enemy. To get them to go through a building, you need one Order to get them to enter it (you can set the Exit Before/After times to 0:00 unless you want them to regroup there before moving onward) and a separate Order to get them to leave it for their true destination.

Be warned though; in some cases, they'll STILL run out the door they came in and run around the block.

Thanks for resurrecting this useful thread, Frankster. Maybe it should be stickied? (and some of the currently stickied threads in the various fora should probably be unstickied)

[abneo3sierra]

Alright, am still having difficulty with this, and I am quite sure I am following the idea closely.

A couple of questions in particular....

I have a group of blue vehicles (a convoy) entering the map on a road...intending to have them basically follow the road,and engage only targets that they need to engage, in order to reach another objective at the other end of the map.."on any given day, an easy run,but not on this day....." kind of thing. The problem is that no matter what times i put along their way points, they never leave where they first deployed to. As very many people have designed quite impressive scenarios, I KNOW this must be just something incredibly stupid on my part, but I am just not finding it. I should say that I have "edited"many scenarios since I began to play, but usually the edit is just substitution of one type vehicle for another to see "what if" or messing with reinforcement schedules to delay or shorten arrival times of reinforcements, or i n a couple of instances,adding to map and forces ...all of which have been in editing existing scenarios...this is my first attempt at ground up,map,scenario,AI,etc...but always in those other occasions, adding units in to a scenario,those units actually fought,here they seem content to just sit.

The two particular questions... what step is being missed,beyond adding i n the unit,and putting it into an AI plan, and creating the places and times for those plans, number one...

and is this the same missed step that causes them to,besides just sitting still,not to fight even.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Ron

[LongLeftFlank]

See my post 23 above for one possible cause. If units already on map are already executing the Plan, the newly arrived reinforcements won't join them and just sit there. Put them in a separate AI group. Hope that helps

[LongLeftFlank]

Even if you subsequently change the pulldown box nothing will change in the unit's weapons, numbers, etc. You must delete the unit, select a replacement, toggle the Equipment to the desired level and then Purchase. But maybe not in that order...

For example, I had to replace and redeploy an entire Marine company because I realized that they didn't carry the grenade Tommy guns in 2004 so Equipment had to be Poor. I renamed the old company DELETE and after buying and naming the new company deployed them in the same locations as the old unit. Then I deleted the DELETE force.

[abneo3sierra]

Thank you. I have them arriving at 5 minutes in, behind only a scout screen with a different plan. The scout screen does not move either,just stays in it's setup place,but at least it seems willing to fire on enemy contacts. Do you know if the setting for normal/cautious/etc has any effect on this? It is the only part I am not understanding well, I went back to some other scenarios where units acted in something like the manner I am looking for here, and tried to copy the settings from there, to here,but seems not to work. "reverse engineering" at it's worst lol.

[LongLeftFlank]

They go from only 3-4 dudes (one of whom has an SVD) per team at Poor to 5 guys at Excellent. They also get embedded RPG gunners. And at Average or better, every team has an RPD.

AFAIK headcount doesn't vary among Fighters or any other unit type.

[LongLeftFlank]

AS, set your Exit Before/after command for their Setup order to zero and see what happens. If that doesn't work set Exit Before 6:30 and see if they move. Do this on a test version with all enemy forces deleted. And double check to ensure no other units in your force have inadvertently been assigned to the same AI group.

[abneo3sierra]

Did you mean to set both times to zero, or just "after" to 0:00 ?

[Frankster65]

...Thanks for resurrecting this useful thread, Frankster. Maybe it should be stickied? (and some of the currently stickied threads in the various fora should probably be unstickied)

Hi LongLeftFlank, personally I think it should be stickied. I come back to it time after time when I get a brain fart regarding how this stuff operates.

[LongLeftFlank]

One headache with the AI is that units won't necessarily gravitate to the objective squares that are most convenient to their current position, but appear to select them randomly.

So instead of units a-c advancing like this:

a2 b2 c2

^ ^ ^

|..|..|

|..|..|

a1 b1 c1

you get a reshuffle

c2 a2 b2

^ ^ ^

| / /

/ /

/ / \

a1 b1 c1 (well, you get the idea)

EDIT: this forum deletes "extra" spaces, but you should be able to follow my meaning

This means units spend a lot of time moving laterally (often across enemy fire). In city streets, this means a lot of Uncons running long distances frantically, getting Tired and often getting gunned down like dogs.

Since you only get 8 different AI groups in the game, you may not be in a position to hack units a-c into 3 separate groups. Steve has promised more groups in future evolutions of the engine, which will help but not remove the problem (even 15 groups gets used up awfully fast by a company-sized AI force).

My workaround, which isn't perfect but better than nothing, is to advance units in "hourglass fashion" as follows:

c3 a3 b3

^ ^ ^

\ | /

\ | /

"2"

/ | \

/ | \

a1 b1 c1

Where "Order 2" (i.e. every other move) is to a staging area in the middle of the advance front (preferably out of likely enemy LOS since it presents a "target rich" environment). This doesn't eliminate the lateraling problem, but it does reduce it a bit. For "Order 2", I also typically set the Exit Before / Exit After clocks to 0:00, so that unless I want to have the units regroup in the staging area, they just touch there and start on their next order.

[LongLeftFlank]

Did you mean to set both times to zero, or just "after" to 0:00 ?

Both times get set to zero, making this a "staging order" as described in my previous post. In other words, the unit will execute it at the earliest convenience (unless some other problem is stopping it).

[abneo3sierra]

Got it working left flank! Thank you for the help!

[LongLeftFlank]

Awesome. You can repay me by playtesting my first (historical) Ramadi scenario, RELIEF OF JOKER THREE, which is getting some finishing touches (assuming my work permits it).

I'd like some folks with military backgrounds to provide feedback, because I am trying to blend "gaming" with some serious military history.

[abneo3sierra]

Will do,just say when.

[bodkin]

Now that this thread is stickied the name should probably be changed to AI Plans Q&A or somefink. Considering it's gone beyond the initial enquiry.

[LongLeftFlank]

....if it starts the game with an ammo level of SEVERE (i.e. about 20% of the "bar"). By extrapolation, if the bar is entirely depleted it will likely need more like 2000 rounds although I haven't tested it.

This isn't really an AI issue per se, but I'm just sharing my finding in case someone searches. To establish this, I had a Marine squad with ammo levels at SEVERE ACQUIRE ammunition from a series of abandoned Humvees by having teams enter them.

Curiously, when you recombine the squad after each team goes in, they don't share the ammo equally.

When I re-split the squad to see if everyone was full, Team A, the 5 man team which hadn't been doing ammo runs was still a little short. I had to send it into one of the M707s (that can seat 5 instead of 4) to top off.

[Erwin]

IIRC if you split off an Assault team, I think the Support team end up with more ammo (assuming the squad hasn't already acquired 1000+ rounds of course).

Are you saying that even when you do a SPLIT SQUAD, that one team has more ammo?

[LongLeftFlank]

Yes. I sent 4 man teams to 3 humvees and they accumulated about 1500 rounds, recombining after each trip (I didn't want to overfill) and then resplitting. After the 3rd trip the squad showed nearly full, but when I resplit, the 5 man team still showed ~80% while the 2 4 man teams showed full. 100 rounds topped him off too.

[nik mond]

Dismounting seems to work fine at the platoon+ formation level but mixing units under the same F key has problems.

Specifically: I had a BMP platoon designated as A5 (group 5). On its 5th order had it dismount and carry onto order 6. No problem works fine.

So I added to this group a SF squad mounted in a jeep and designated them as part of this A5 group as well. Sure enough it followed all the orders of the BMP's in group 5 above to each location but failed to dismount.

[nik mond]

Im going to answer my own question above and post another don't do this for the AI.

First if you attach a lone squad/unit out of C2 to an AI group the time delay will affect the orders. I stuck a jeep from another HQ into the A5 group above. It was moving to objective with much delay and missed the dismount order because group A5 had already reached said objective and were proceeding to the next.

Problem 2. I noticed US groups are not being split and the AI tends to lumps them as 1 massive group, even though multiple groups and plans are set up. Yet with syrian forces the AI has no problem assigning them to multiple AI groups. Likely this is do to the small formations of the syrians and the huge battle group hiarchy of the US HQ designation. just a guess right now.

This poses a problem when the units get separated due to knock out dismounts during movement. I noticed these large US formations were only doing 4-5 movement orders out of 10 lets say. Then would stop. Well its because the ground troops left behind from knock out vehicles are still part of the Group. The A1 group lets say. The AI seems to move to location maintaining interval. So if units are split up 1 km apart the movement to the next order is not executed. This is a problem, maybe short jumps in AI moves might be a quick fix. Or better the Quick battles that users make are likley better played as blueforce US vs or red vs red syrian. Bottom line don't play red syrian vs AI blue US especially for a defensive scenario. The enemy US forces may stop in their tracks.

These are my observations on the AI routines for GB maps, the causes are only my guess. I'm still a noob. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[George MC]

What type of behaviour you giving the AI Group? I've found 'max assault' tends to stop everyone in their tracks when contact is made. Advance or assault are better if you want units to keep moving. FWIW when assigning AI groups I tend to keep units in their C2 set-up i.e. I try not to split platoons etc.

[nik mond]

What type of behaviour you giving the AI Group? I've found 'max assault' tends to stop everyone in their tracks when contact is made. Advance or assault are better if you want units to keep moving. FWIW when assigning AI groups I tend to keep units in their C2 set-up i.e. I try not to split platoons etc.

Good advice on keeping units in their C2. I never use max assault (yet).

Most my observations above are from making Quick battle maps and setting up AI routines for Quick battles. Then testing with small to large battles of varying units.

[eniced73]

Would be nice if someone from BF jumped in here to clear these points up!

Frustrates me to see other posts (the one about CMBN being unrealistic) getting 3 maybe 4 posts from Steve on moot points. I dont want to get out of line here but why even waste your time responding to these types of posts. Seeing that CMBN AI probably works the same way as CMSF it would be nice to have a simple explanation on how the AI setup works. Unless it is going to be in the CMBN manual unlike CMSF.