There has been some discussions about this, but I wasn’t able to find any specific thread, so I’d like to create one, keeping relevant information in one place.
In general, ASR AI tries to improve upon the original A3 AI in various ways, full description at http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=24080 (and some more) and it would be useful to have it in our modpack to make AI feel more "human like".
My independent testing of putting a few squads against each other shows that
the most common engagement stance is crouching, not constantly toggling between prone/standing
squads keep 360 security, especially in MOUT - they even scout the area and cover possible approaches
soldiers - in some instances - use cover and lean from it, being harder to hit
AI movements seem much more … determined and systematic, not chaotic sprinting all around the place
wounded squad members are sometimes left behind, so the squad isn’t easily "fixed" by incapacitating one member
when the contact is broken, AI searches nearby terrain, opening gates and doors, etc., pausing at various places, covering sectors, for significantly longer than the original AI - this makes it IMHO much more dangerous and capable of "ambushes"
Most of the time, though, it isn’t very human-like in seeking cover - it feels perfectly safe just standing in the middle of the road, crouched. Overall though, it is a significant improvement, IMHO. It doesn’t change the AI completely, it still acts as a reasonably "dumb" AI, so I’d say it’s an evolution, not revolution.
For example - for those worried that AI becomes suppressed too easily - it doesn’t, it keeps shooting you without rushing for cover, just like the old one, … most of the time.
The big feature for me and the reason I was looking into it is stealth detection - you can finally sneak up on enemies without them magically detecting you 5 meters away (at least from my testing):
[youtube]cLNdNm2CFf4[/youtube]
(just a demonstration, real applications might be much more diverse or interesting)
It seems that at least some other A3 communities use ASR AI, so I think we should do a proper evaluation why it is or it is not suitable for us.
Thank you.
Thank you for looking into this. ASR is on the list of things to test, but given all the other stuff up in the air right now, its on a low-priority. You can continue to solo-test and provide us with results here.
The big thing is compatibility with our current mods and how much impact the mod has on Frames.
Performance:
I made a testing mission, http://i.imgur.com/5sf2BI8.jpg (Altis, salt flats), all units with allowDamage false (so they would keep fighting) and ammo boxes to test resupplying and tested server performance via the #monitor command on my dedicated server. The average FPS (or CPS / cycles per second) on the server was
vanilla AI - 44
ASR AI - 47
so ASR AI seems to be actually faster than vanilla AI, at least for AI during combat.
I did verify that it works - vanilla AI just went prone and started shooting and that was it. ASR AI actually made use of the concrete walls and sandbags, tried to flank, resupplied, etc. – the higher FPS might have been due to less bullets being fired as a result of less soldiers shooting and more moving around.
I also quickly tested ~10 squads moving through forests without any difference from vanilla AI (both at 50 FPS).
So as far as my testing goes, no performance problems found. My client FPS was also at about 45 in both cases.
Compatibility:
I didn’t notice any errors or other incompatibilities on the client, but I was unable to start the mission on a linux dedicated server reliably with the ASR AI mod while having some other mods (ACE/MCC/…) active. Others have reported similar issues and also that it works on a windows dedicated server (which we have), so that shouldn’t concern us very much - lots of other mods are unfortunately problematic on arma3 linux.
I didn’t test whether or how the vanilla AI skill or MCC skill settings affect the AI, but as I understand those system very barely, I’m sure somebody else can test those.
Well, that’s some positive data. Thanks for looking at that. I’ll add it to the issue tracker on the github and we’ll give another look-see on it soonish.
Did you note the AI using buildings at all? I hear that they do with this mod.
Also, have you looked at this mod of the mod? It supposedly gets the AI to move behind cover.
When I wrote about AI flanking and using cover, it was very rarely - the vast majority of soldiers just do what vanilla AI does when in direct combat - shoot. Without movement. The few individuals who moved with ASR AI probably lost line-of-sight for a brief moment, making them fall back to enemy seeking, making them actually move behind the cover. So in this regard, it’s really more about "better vanilla AI" rather than "complete AI revamp", as I wrote about evolution vs revolution.
I didn’t see AI using buildings, at least they didn’t search through them. However they do open gates and search through gardens / closed areas around buildings.
No, I was testing just the base ASR AI 3, not Pooter’s version or TPWCAS.
Did my own comparison test with a comparison recording I’ll upload later.
I must say, Pooter’s version really has me impressed. ASR was kind of meh to me previously, but watching the soldiers go for cover and move to cover relative to contacts was great. The rearming was really good, too.
I’ll upload the comparison video soon.
I also didn’t see much frame rate loss between either, if any. Seemed to hold up the same.
So, the two biggest things that we were concerned about are pretty quelled.
Nice, thanks for doing that. It seems that I was attributing some vanilla behaviors to ASR AI (moving to cover occasionally - http://i.imgur.com/d0TMcrx.jpg, eh), although it wasn’t as good as Pooter’s version. It also seems that GAIA does a lot more bounding within a squad.
One thing I didn’t see in my testing or in your video is
The rate of fire indeed seems to be adjusted to the distance,
[quote]
AI’s fire mode selection, rate of fire and engagement ranges are tweaked. Makes them shoot more human-like.[/quote]but ARs don’t exactly area-fire (or fire at last known position) to suppress.
Yeah. A lot of the features I’ve heard praised about this mod seemed to be absent. The ONE time I had an AI go into a building, it was vanilla (just because my waypoint was there)…they did rearm, so that was cool I guess.
The thing I noticed that I liked the most is that they’d actually go for the cover first instead of just ignoring it or oddly grouping around it.
[justify]How does the driving compare between ASR and vanilla?
One thing I really like about Vcom AI is that they have managed to quite fix the AI driving and building breaching. Haven’t done much combat testing with it in a long while though.[/justify]
From the mod description and my testing, it doesn’t seem like it changes anything. However the vanilla AI isn’t as bad as the video shows - it can drive around and even find alternate routes as long as the road is blocked by specific obstacles (ie. empty and/or destroyed cars). Vcom seems to only extend the list of obstacles to various other objects, not change the behavior.
We can test Vcom AI as well, it’s AFAIK one of the big 3 AI mods out there (the 3rd being singleplayer-only bCombat), but let’s keep it separate from ASR AI testing (another thread).
However a quick mention - we need to balance the AI capabilities with what the players / GMs want from it - giving more power to the AI ultimately means taking the power from the GM, like where/when the infantry dismounts, whether it keeps pushing through fire, whether and when it uses artillery, etc. In this respect, ASR AI seems to do the least of them all, affecting only infantry combat, which might (depending on the decision) be a good thing.
I was further testing Pooter’s version on open ground (town offense/defense) - the defense part is somewhat lacking (http://i.imgur.com/XVvU6zS.jpg ) as AI doesn’t realize the boundary of what to defend, but the offense part is amazing. The most amazing part is that AI doesn’t get stuck or move too foolishly ahead - it cleverly uses concealment and defilades, hard cover, fire & maneuver (within a squad) and sends 1-2 soldiers to "flank" (or distract rather) from further away (100-300m to the side). In the end, it reaches its destination through deliberate movement.
There’s a slight problem with reinforcements as they enter the Danger state prematurely, which delays them somewhat, but they don’t get stuck.
The defending AI got at least good spread out alongside the town edge - http://i.imgur.com/GCUXf3R.jpg .
I tried to make them use buildings, but they would just stand/lay inside, without using stairs or windows.
edit: I also tested suppression and the AI squad seems to quickly move behind cover when you start engaging it. This unfortunately makes it pretty easy for me to eliminate them as multiple soldiers start peeking behind the same corner if there’s not enough cover. They’re also pretty resistant to being pinned - after a short while, they push onto your position.
Testing, testing, testing. I’ve read about 10 various community AI improvement frameworks but all I have to say, only after testing you know if there is something in those adverts.
ASR AI does enter the building, it opens the door and everything, it just isn’t scripted to take positions at the windows or move upstairs. We can work around that, though, using the Ares / garrison functionality (if players aren’t nearby).
[justify]Regarding Pooter’s ASR version: keep in mind he posted this at the end of November. Since then he has been updating the mod still, but we need to keep in mind that Pooter’s version might be halted soon due to the dev having expressed similar frustrations a couple of time in his BIS thread (though not in such a severe tone). Worst case scenario we’d have to switch from Pooter’s ASR to regular.
Regarding both regular and Pooter’s ASR: In both threads there have been reports of negative impact on the aiming behaviour of AI due to the mods userconfig skill file being a bit wonky with 1.54. We’ll have to do detailed in-game comparisons of the AI accuracy with and without ASR running on our server. It’s vital that these tests are done on the server to fully replicate all the different settings which do impact how the final AI skill is determined.[/justify]
They’re also pretty resistant to being pinned - after a short while, they push onto your position.
