AI reluctance to push objectives.

  1. 8 years ago

    Hi, I've set up a mission with RHS (although behavior is the same in vanilla) where BLUFOR start on the central Altis airfield in invasion mode and OPFOR start on the East side in occupation mode. The problem is that BLUFOR do not seem to be in any real hurry to capture anything.
    They push a bit at the beginning but only progress into the first couple of towns and then stop entirely. I've tried setting the CQB to dominant to spawn holding units in the occupied towns but the military and civilian placement spawned units still do not seem to push any further.
    The AI commanders are synced to the opposite placement modules as well as their own and if I set persistent tasks on I will get them further out, but on their own the AI seem to be more interested in napping than anything else.
    I'm wondering if this has something to do with the TAORs not moving, the BLUFOR one is still centered around the airfield and the OPFOR one still covers the whole east side and this isn't changed by the AI taking territory.
    This leads to a stalemate where BLUFOR take a town or two and then settle in for a prolonged glaring match with OPFOR.

    Does anybody have a solution to this? Or even the ability to shed some light on what's going on here?
    Thanks

  2. Friznit

    10 Jul 2015 Administrator

    How many groups do they have to play with at the start? On Invasion mode, they'll use at least one group to defend, hold one or two in reserve and will need 4 or 5 left over to attack the next objective. If they have 60 groups, they can hold around 6 objectives give or take before they go static.

  3. Edited 8 years ago by thefinn

    TAOR's have little to do with objectives themselves once set. They are just the starting point.

    Check under your mil and civ placement modules for the objective sizes. They can modify the behavior if you're looking at a particular objective on the map and going "why aren't they attacking this?" it could be that the objective you're looking at doesn't fit the criteria.

    Also the AI can be floundering at the start of the game on the west side I've noticed. This could be because of the size of the mil and civ sectors at the start of the game on the west side closest to the east. I notice the CSAT on my map tend to kick ass all over NATO at the start, it's only hours into the game where nato starts to hold and push effectively.

    I've found this to be the case every single start.

    My suggestion: leave it running over night and take a look in the morning for a better idea of how they go longer term.

  4. @Friznit: A fair number of groups spawn at the start, I have the limiter set at 50 with the group sizes set to 60 for each module, so 120 total for each side not including CQB, it's quite a large area that BLUFOR are invading, but there seems to be a lot of units milling around doing nothing in or near their initial spawn area.

    @thefinn: Thanks for the clarification about TAORs, I have it set to populate even the quite small objectives. Would it perhaps be better to set only larger ones, as there'd then be less objectives to focus on and it might produce a more directed push. At the moment it seems like OPFOR dig in and BLUFOR spread over their TAOR and the first 1k or so and then run out of steam.
    I have left it running for a while before and the activity seems to die out after a few hours, turning into the aforementioned glaring contest, so unless BLUFOR are taking more than a day to get going I'm not sure it's just that they start slow.

  5. Edited 8 years ago by thefinn

    Yeah sounds like a more systemic problem to do with perhaps the military logistics module?

    Are they both set to invade?

    I'm doing almost the exact same mission atm.

    Both Civ and Mil placment modules for NATO and CSAT are set the same.
    AI Commanders are set for -
    Invasion and Constant.
    
    Civ Placement are set for -
    Objective Type Filter ALL.
    Objective Size Filter Ignore Small and medium.
    Objective Priority Filter Ignore Low Priority.
    Force size 200.
    Weighting Spec Ops.
    Readiness 100%
    
    Mil Placement set for -
    Ignore Small and Medium.
    Ignore low and medium priority.
    Size 200
    Weighting Mechanized.
    Readiness 100%
    
    Logistics for both sides is Dynamic/Dynamic with everything available to use.
    
    A single CQB Module is set and linked to both commanders - they both use identical settings at 5% single unit CQB.
    

    As long as you have the Alive module and a Virtual AI System module placed down somewhere (as well as the correct synchs between modules), it should all run.

    I'm actually wondering now if you have the correct synchs set up.

    I'm running an AMD Phenom II 3.3ghz with 8gig ram and getting FPS of around 45-50 when monitoring the server.

    If I spawn and check the map I can see the intel showing unit KIA's every few minutes all around from the airfield to Telos.

  6. @thefinn: The syncs are all set up correctly, my module setup is much the same as yours, except with military set to mechanized and civilian set to light infantry and CQB synced to the civilian modules rather than left to the whole map.
    I have OPFOR set to occupation, which I thought would be appropriate for them holding a much larger area and BLUFOR invading it, I'll try setting them to invasion as well although the problem is BLUFOR behavior, not OPFOR.
    I'm on a 4ghz I7 and FPS is not really an issue (first time I've ever said that about a BI game!).

  7. @BatSpoggy I'm on a 4ghz I7 and FPS is not really an issue (first time I've ever said that about a BI game!).

    Talking about running the monitor on the server as admin. I have no real idea why it calculates the server efficiency as FPS :)

  8. Oh I see. I'm not too up on the server side as it belongs to my friend, I'm just making the missions.
    What is the effect of the force sizes? I've currently got them set to 100 for each, might I be better off setting them higher? The contested area is the whole eastern portion of Altis, so I'm wondering if insufficient force numbers would cause slow progress.

  9. Yeah insufficient forces definitely makes it all slower. I'm using 200 for each civilian and military placement module (800 total) - across the whole of altis.

  10. @BatSpoggy What is the effect of the force sizes?

    I always understood the force size to be measured roughly in units rather than groups. So selecting 100 meant you'd have a force of 100 ais (or there abouts) split into on average, 10 groups. This would appear to be correct since I've been running some ALiVE Reshmaan missions with around 1700 AIs on the map spread over nearly 50 objectives and when one side wins it takes every profile they've got to cover the map with still a couple of objectives remaining.

    For Altis, I'd suggest at least 400 vs 400 which gives roughly 40 groups per side, and then on invasion have around 20 objectives. You can go a few more but obviously they get stretched thinner until one side cant wipe the other off the map, but your victory conditions are upto you.

  11. Edited 8 years ago by SpyderBlack723

    Hey Spoggy, if you need to, you can drop the mission file that would help as well for hands-on testing and experimenting to see what's going on.

  12. I think I've got it now, I upped the force sizes to 200 per module and 800 total (I'd erroneously thought that I'd need to keep them low to preserve FPS but it's not an issue) and there's now a lot more activity. Active limit is at 50, would there be any benefit in setting that higher?
    With the auto-task gen issue you solved in the other thread I reckon I have everything sorted, as I'm assuming that the auto-tasks will be focused on objectives that the AI is trying to take and so it'll keep the players involved with the main fight better, this removes the need for FLOT to be really obvious and populated all the time.
    Is that about right?

  13. Friznit

    11 Jul 2015 Administrator

    Hopefully! If you balance your group numbers and spawn range you shouldn't need to use the rather heavy handed active limiter, but it's a good safety net in case too many AI try to spawn at once. Task Generator should in theory give tasks in support of the AI commander but it can be a little weird. There's a script on the wiki which can jump you straight to whichever objective the AI Commander is attacking - could be used to show the current FLOT with a bit of tweaking maybe.

 

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