Attacking with the A-10 Viper. Subtitled: The A.I. needs to shoot at jammers

[pilgrim]

The title pretty much sums it up, but here's my reasoning.

I happened to be alone on a server yesterday, and I was trying some different ideas. Against the AI, the now infamous drop-a-jammer-pathway-to-the-base tactic is trivial. Since the AI never shoots at jammers, it's just a matter of taking a command track and dropping each sensor within the radius of the previous one until (1) you've reached the base, and (2) you've completely covered the base. The AI won't ever shoot at them, even if you plant one like a parking meter right next to an AI vehicle. After that, the game becomes almost pointless -- drop a Cutter, capture the tower, keep dropping on the base, etc.

So, if for no other reason than to prevent that strategy from being 100% effective, the AI should start shooting at enemy jammers. (Side note: I don't expect the AI to be as good as a human, do the same things as a human, etc. However, this is an obvious thing for the AI to think, "Enemy jammers are bad (just like turrets!), so I should shoot at them.")

However, referring back to my title, the situation becomes even more amusing with something else I've discovered. Once the base is completely jammer covered, use that same command vehicle to drop mines....right on top of the AI vehicles. Unless they're pursuing a target, the AI vehicles in the base are fairly stationary, so it becomes a simple thing to call in Close Air Support: Viper mine drops. The AI vehicles, if they don't notice the Viper coming straight down on them in the vertical, blissfully sit there while mines rain down around them.

If there's a reason why the AI is currently programmed (or disallowed) to shoot at jammers, I'd love to hear it. Currently, it seems far too easy to exploit.

[poesel]

I hope we will soon have no bots on the server. Currently you are lucky to have more than 4 humans in a game.

Its easy to make the bots good shooters but hard to make them good tacticians. Having them shoot at jammers would eliminate the jammers from the game.

The bots shoot at ground turrets. Have you ever tried to drop ground turrets (as attacker) on the raid map in sight of the bots? Even if you place them under ion protection they will shoot them faster than you can drop them.

[yurch]

Players can nail those turrets pretty easily too. They don't last long in sight of anything - two ion bursts, one burst of 20mm AP, ect. The problem is simply that bots spot them better with thier omnivision.

The mine thing works on players too. It's actually rather annoying, you miss the dot often times if it's right on top of you, and most vehicles obviously can't shoot straight up if you know it's coming.

[pilgrim]

Originally posted by poesel71:

Its easy to make the bots good shooters but hard to make them good tacticians. Having them shoot at jammers would eliminate the jammers from the game.

No doubt that it would shorten the lifespan of exposed jammers. That, of course, just might motivate players to find better spots for jammers (in a Cutter trench, etc.).

Faced with the choice of short jammer life vs. bots that ignore an enemy jammer 5m away, I'd choose short jammer life.

Originally posted by yurch:

The mine thing works on players too.

Hmmmmmm. I've never tried that...yet.

[pilgrim]

One more thought along that line:

Is this whole issue configurable from the server-side? ie, Is it just a matter of changing a Jammer.Valid.Target type of variable from 0 to 1 in a configuration file?

[cool breeze]

I want bots to shoot all deployables also, but it would be nice if omnivision was subdued.

[Kurtz]

Bots have good accuracy, but short memory.

Drive behind an obstacle and they forget about you almost immediately. Drive forward and fire, drive back into cover. Repeat until bot burns.

I agree that bots should fire at anything that belongs to the enemy - in some threat priority of course.

[yurch]

It might be good to take ammo type into consideration for when bot shoots what. Bots waste a significant portion of thier ammo just firing on distant turrets and obscenely far dropships - they really don't have any fire discipline.

Ions are the only thing that could be used properly in this manner. (and the bots even manage to kill themselves with that)

Of course, they seem to be unable to hit a stationary target twice with the beam but are capable of hitting a dropship with a HEAT round at 4000m out. Go figure. I can't wait for the day when there are enough players in the server to not have bots wasting all my equipment.