Profile of Dar

Thanks for the amount of good information here. I will use this knowledge to further fine-tune AI behavior.


This is off-topic, but may be interesting to some:

Context: I got my AI to lay mines by tricking them into thinking that it's an MG bunker of sorts. This way, they will lay mines in somewhat strategic locations and around their emplacements. The AI loves MG buildings, so attaching a dummy MG to any building or object will result in them constructing that asap.

BTW your suggestion for coaxing the AI to use mines with MG42 works, although if you do that somehow the mines doesn't explode at all even if I change the weapon. I solved by spawning another mine that explodes and not deleting the original MG42-laden mine so the AI doesn't try to constantly build mines.

Good to hear that you got it to work. My AI mine actually works without spawning another set.
The mine starts out with 2 hardpoints:
1. hardpoint: dummy_mg
2. hardpoint: teller_mine_mp

I added a change_weapon action in the mine's on_construction_actions that changes hardpoint 1 to the teller_mine_mp weapon (or whatever mine "weapon" you want).

Then, with a delay action of 0,01, I remove_weapon the hardpoint 2 with fire_and_forget=true.

Happy to elaborate further, maybe even in a dedicated thread.

Thanks a lot, I will try duplicating that

Hey community,

over the years of tinkering with the AI I've never really figured out how it calculates threat from a unit, or where to attack next. The AI seems to have some sort of threat perception that can break a game quite easily:

For instance, when I put a Pak 43 and a Machinegun Bunker at a chokepoint, even an Expert Bot will assault that only once or twice with a probing attack, and then avoid it for pretty much the rest of the match - even though enough artillery or some concentrated attack would surely bring the emplacement down.

This can lead to funneling the AI onto one side of the map, making it extremely easy to hold them off, and somewhat turning your Pak 43 into an expensive wall of hedgehogs. Behavior varies depending on the map, but there is certainly a pattern to this.

At the opposite end of things, the AI regularly launches suicidal attacks into your territory, ignoring everything in their way, just to get rid of a Walking Stuka or Panzerwerfer.

Now, is there a particular value to tweak, or set of rules to change that would convince the AI to launch more serious attacks against strongpoints, or to not throw an army away to kill some rocket artillery?

Any leads welcome.

Some of these definitely doable, some others are gonna be very hard. Aligning turrets to sync the barrel movement would be a particular challenge.

Regarding the AI trouble, I adjusted pretty much every extension in squad, entity and weapon to those of a PaK Gun, with mixed results. I don't know what did it, but the retreat loops around the HQ are no longer an issue.

Two things became new issues now.

1. Sometimes, for minutes even, the vehicle will drive 10 meters back and forth on the spot until it eventually heads to a new target of opportunity. This happens in combat as well, and looks rather ridiculous. Never encountered anything like this before

2. The AI uses the vehicle much like a team weapon, despite it's armor, mobility and firepower. That means it won't do a frontal assault with it, but rather drive around the edges of the map looking for an open flank, sometimes parking the tank there to wait for you. Not terrible, but not what I had in mind. The tank will also try to remove itself from any engagement with other armor and sometimes infantry by reversing away, even if it could put up a fight.

My guess is that the dummy weapon and hardpoint 02 interaction is the major factor in all of this, but I'm at a loss as to how to fix this. The AI seems to roll out a particular movement and engagement plan for a unit as soon as it spots the team_weapon_ext, and this plan does not work well with the nature of a tank.

Some more combinations, this time two versions of the Panzer III, with some visual liberties of course.

I was using a bulldozer attach function and syncing to the gunner_sync marker of an M2 .50cal that's added to the turret's abp. That way the unit plays like a regular vehicle, but animating the treads is tricky. I used a filter action that requires the turret (Pz IV) to be moving, then a velocity variable will be applied to the hull (StuG) to move the treads.




Now, unfortunately, there is a big issue with AI. The AI can't spawn attached entities it seems, so this method will not work for AI-controlled vehicles. The vehicle has to have the "abandoned" critical removed from its health_ext, as on death or takeover by AI, the vehicle will lose any attached entities.

If anyone has found a way to make the AI spawn attached entities, let me know.

To circumvent this, I created team weapon-style copies of the Panzer III for the AI - these work exactly like the SdKfz 234 I made, see the guide above. This leads to two more issues:

1. The AI will never build team-weapon-attached vehicles. Maybe because it identifies the dummy weapon as useless, I don't really know. This can be fixed by having the AI build a regular Panzer IV as a dummy, that despawns and in its stead spawns a team weapon attached vehicle

2. Once the AI has built a team-weapon-attached vehicle, it will not use it properly. The moment it takes control, it will reverse the vehicle into its own base, drive up to the HQ and drive out again, about one sector, then reverse back and so on in an endless loop. I observed this behavior in several tests.

@Sie_Sayoka: You have experimented with these methods more than anyone, do you maybe have a solution or a pointer how to fix this, especially No.2?