Bot Wranglers and the Bots Who Love Them

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Provocative title, not that provocative concept. I needed a thread to ramble about useful additions to the bot wrangling interface.

As stands, there's a lot of focus on playing from a FPS-esque direction because getting the bots to do useful work from the tactical screen (hereafter abbreviated "tac") is not just awkward, sometimes its a real pain in the tookas. But, given a bit of polish -- OK, a lot of tears, sweat, and programmer-bile -- it could be a lot easier.

I'll just put out a chunk of ideas that have been kicking around my head and some notes:

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• Multi-point Commands: Being able to give multi-point orders with different modes at each point will help a lot when it comes time to orchestrate moving groups together. Not only that, but it'll help a lot when just trying to get a bot to pull any moves more complicated than driving straight at the enemy without babysitting them. And that gives the players more time to come up with good tactics and even better strategy.
  
  The bots should be able to follow a path of at least five points, shifting from "Defend," "Attack," etc at each one.</font>
• Pause Times: It's probably a good idea to let the player specify a length of time for each point to be executed so you don't have the bots running about like chickens with their heads cut off, not actually executing things, just skipping on to the next point. This is useful for even one-point paths if the bot assumes a shift back to Autonomous once the timeout expires.
  
  An excellent use for this is "Hull-Down," as you can then get the bots to move into firing position for X period, and then do whatever seems like the right thing at the time.</font>
• Terrain Awareness: In particular, the bots need to use hull-down a lot more often than they do, now. The hull-down command is great, except that the bot doesn't use it well for screening during reload times, where they should back up somewhat to gain protection.
  
  This is mainly an issue when they're doing mostly-undirected modes like Attack and Defend. Probably because the others are all "drive straight there and do this" modes.</font>
• Platoons: This one's a biggie. We need the ability to form temporary formations of between 2 and 5 elements into a platoon which drops together, re-drops within the nearest safe radius, and can be put into one of several formations for movement, not to mention given commands all at once to execute in that formation.
  
  This should include platoons made of multiple players along with bots, in the same way Battlefield 2 squads are formed and for the same reason. Being in a platoon should give you some advantage beyond bots staying in formation, such as shared point-scoring and possibly a slightly faster drop-speed if the platoon commander is alive and on-board.
  
  This leads naturally to ...</font>
• Formations: Once we have groups of elements moving together, its probably for the best that we give them some way to do so together with some degree of coherence, especially with bot-facing going in to the mix. At the very least, we need the following formation options:
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• Line: The obvious; all elements abreast, with bots giving primary attention to the forward arc fudged slightly toward their side of the formation.</font>
• Echelon Left/Right: Simple slanty diagonal line, with bot attention focused toward the right or left.</font>
• Star: Like the infantry formation, with bot sectors being distributed in 360o, facing outwards, based on place in formation. More useful for defensive static positions than on the move, but even then it could be useful if you think you might get jumped from behind.</font>

All of this improved handling of tac operations kind of begs for the addition of the ability to give one's own element the ability to drive itself, if not shoot, while in a formation, at least. This applies equally to non-platoon leader player elements, so they can designate the "driver" to stay in formation while they concentrate on watching their sector. Player-led platoons should stay in formation on the driving player as they maneuver.

Together, I think this is the most coherent set of abilities that can be put together to make the tac equal in importance to the embodied view, as it stands. Toss in some extras, like the ability to draw on the tac, as well as somewhat better indications on the mini (like known AA radii showing up, etc) and we'll definitely be placed as the best tac/RTS hybrid on Earth ... or in the Rim.

[BigChiefWahoo]

There's an ability right now to set a formation for bots. It would be neat if this could be stored.

[cool breeze]

Yeah! And topographical lines. Normal mono color would be great but done like TAspring would probably be even better (rainbow colored stripes which turn on off with fkey). Dwhen issuing hull down orders do you click where you want them to be hull down to? as in a bot is approaching a ridge. enemies are on top of next ridge. you click move hull down to the next ridge. it stops before top of current ridge when turret can see top of next ridge? will they move off of exactly ordered path to find better/closer hull down, like a crater in a field that is say 15 degrees off the exact ordered path? Group ordering and selecting through the non tac map would be extremely helpful, especially before topo map. Thanks!

[yurch]

Originally posted by cool breeze:

when issuing hull down orders do you click where you want them to be hull down to?

Yes. Although it seems to be that they stop when they can see the hulldown point, not shoot. The result is that they sometimes stop and wait on an incline infavorable to actually hitting the target due to the turret not being able to traverse far enough.

Advance works by similarly determining a driving point, but it uses sight of an enemy contact (like hull down does with the defined point) as the stopping condition. Annoyingly enough, once they stop, they need to be given a new order, even if that enemy is no longer present.

I've noticed that bots seem to flip the attack/defend order around by themselves. Often when told to attack an objective, they switch to defend and just hang where they are. They do a similar thing with ordered to get back the flag... the bots are prone to just 'giving up'.

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

There's an ability right now to set a formation for bots. It would be neat if this could be stored.

Its not so much a "formation" as it is "trundle along in a vague way toward a relative position off this other unit." Its hard to configure and the bots are incredibly stupid about staying in formation. There needs to be more an awareness in all the elements of the formation and speed restricted to that of best of the worst element. Else platoon maneuver'll just never work.

Yeah! And topographical lines. Normal mono color would be great but done like TAspring would probably be even better (rainbow colored stripes which turn on off with fkey).

Myself, I far prefer the mono topological lines of not-too-contrastive colour, so you can make out where the saddle points and dips in the surface are a little more clearly.

Bots don't really seem to do anything when ordered to go hull down save drive directly to that spot, and stop once it shows above the other terrain. Sometimes useful for sliding the bots around buildings with minimal exposure as well, but not often.

My gut says we need some perturbation in the bot seeking behaviour to give it a bit more usefullness. Like the Boid flocking algorithm, where complex behaviours come from a set of simple rules being executed on an agent with other agents, perturbed by the environment, the bots can be a little world-blind. I'm not sure what kind of architecture Clay's been using to construct the bot-minds, but I'm sure he can work something out that helps a bit more than it does at the moment.

(Myself, I've always been fond of Patti Maes' "Do The Right Thing" architecture, but I'm an old school geek.)

I've noticed that bots seem to flip the attack/defend order around by themselves. Often when told to attack an objective, they switch to defend and just hang where they are. They do a similar thing with ordered to get back the flag... the bots are prone to just 'giving up'.

And yet, in some cases they don't seem prone enough to extracting, preferring to suicide even when they could hope for extraction. Very odd.

[ClaytoniousRex]

I've noticed that bots seem to flip the attack/defend order around by themselves. Often when told to attack an objective, they switch to defend and just hang where they are.

They do this deliberately. "Attack" means push toward the target point until it's reached and then switch to defense of that point (the bot assumed you attacked it because you want to hold on to it).

"Defend" means stay within a wide radius of the target point, engaging enemy units that come into LOS, even possibly moving toward them (but without leaving the defense radius of the target point). They will also try to maneuver around intervening obstructions within the defense area in order to get a clear shot line to a target, etc. Grappler could elaborate more on how this works when he returns from vacation.

I'm not sure what kind of architecture Clay's been using to construct the bot-minds...

The bots are Grappler's babies. I'm the one who haunts the forum, but there's a long list of names on that "Credits" tab for a reason. They just send me out to the forum because I am the most bald of the lot. ( No, that's not a typo - )

Alex, your list hits all of the important points. We're moving in exactly this direction. If all goes well, it looks like we're finally adding a new dedicated team member with impressive credentials in this field who will be refining the higher level "tactical" AI. Keep your fingers crossed. But whether that pans out or not, we know that these features are important and we'll accomplish them as soon as we can.

[yurch]

Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex:

Err, how wide exactly? I had trouble, more than a few times, just trying to get bots to join the fighting - distances of several kilometers.

Eventually I give up and just give them direct move orders. They always say they're 'defending' whenever this happens.

[aittam]

would be nice to control the radius....... for infantry too, place them and give them a radius to engage, just to be sure that they start to fire when they can kill not when they can only be killed but the same it's true for any afv