Stuff about AI among other things Thread - WIC: Modern Warfare Mod for World in Conflict

First of all, I just tried your beta 6 and the improvements are outstanding. Love the new additions and stuff added in. It felt completely like a new game all over again. Even so, the new additions just made the learning curve a lot more steep than before but nevertheless, I enjoyed it.

Although I am slightly concerned of the AI used in the game. I'm sure it's not the primary focus of the mod but I tend to play offline skirmishes a lot more than online matches. But after I played the beta 6 recently, I find out that the AI is not as aggresive as in beta 4. It's not as hectic as before.

Not only that, I still couldn't get over how weak the Russian side AI is compared to the US side. When going against the US, it's as if the ruskies don't put up a fight at all, on any of the roles. I was forced to handicap the US side to like 4 against 8 Russian players just to make it a lengthy fight or else the match just ends with a total domination of the whole map in less than 5 minutes which really frustrates me. In Beta 4, it was less as bad but still. I think it's the Russian AI armour role that's being slightly weaker, using amphibious transports way too much compared to MBTs and such even in mostly land maps.

I know the mod is made mostly for online or playing with people but I'm just curious, s'all.Also, love your new cruise and theater ballistic missiles. Still having a hard time trying to bust that shockingly huge heavy anti-air net but it was really fun to play with.

speaking of which, why did you remove the suppression of enemy air defense tactical aid? It was useful enough to blind the launchers by specifically aiming the radars alone and could've been twice as useful to aim for the radars in the heavy SAM system in the new beta 6 which puts everything from launchers to radars in one whole squad.

and it's surprisingly tricky and awkward trying to fly the helicopters now, not to mention maneuvering. For instance, in Beta 4, I could just rise to the highest altitude simply by clicking move on the farthest space of land I could see on the screen just once but now I have to like, really put an effort to raising the altitude by clicking a lot of times all around the map just to go to the highest altitude.

Also is there such a thing that your helicopter could crash to the ground even when the computer's yelling to raise altitude? I couldn't tell if I crashed or got hit by a SAM.

That reminds me, the heavy SAMs really are indeed so smart now in beta 6 that it's really a kick in the balls to the SKILLz I've been trying to hone and master during in beta 4. I really need to review your survival against SAMs again because I don't think I was ready getting hit by 3-5 patriot missiles coming down at me at once.

That's all my concerns for now. By the way, thank you for answering my previous questions. I was hoping the last one already closed or deleted by now actually ;p.

Edited by:

spetsnazmelayu wrote: First of all, I just tried your beta 6 and the improvements are outstanding. Love the new additions and stuff added in. It felt completely like a new game all over again. Even so, the new additions just made the learning curve a lot more steep than before but nevertheless, I enjoyed it.

Yup, the new additions mean the learning curve can seem quite steep, but we've made some detailed and helpful tutorials to help players out, which we made sure players were aware of in the Beta 6 article.

spetsnazmelayu wrote: Although I am slightly concerned of the AI used in the game. I'm sure it's not the primary focus of the mod but I tend to play offline skirmishes a lot more than online matches. But after I played the beta 6 recently, I find out that the AI is not as aggresive as in beta 4. It's not as hectic as before.

We don't actually have much control over the AI, it's mostly hard-coded. Sorry for any inconvenience, but the WiC modkit is quite limited.

spetsnazmelayu wrote: Not only that, I still couldn't get over how weak the Russian side AI is compared to the US side. When going against the US, it's as if the ruskies don't put up a fight at all, on any of the roles. I was forced to handicap the US side to like 4 against 8 Russian players just to make it a lengthy fight or else the match just ends with a total domination of the whole map in less than 5 minutes which really frustrates me. In Beta 4, it was less as bad but still. I think it's the Russian AI armour role that's being slightly weaker, using amphibious transports way too much compared to MBTs and such even in mostly land maps.

Yeah, it's a lot better online, and again also we don't have that much control over the AI.

However, there is a maintenance update coming soon, Beta 7, which will address some of the balancing issues.

spetsnazmelayu wrote: I know the mod is made mostly for online or playing with people but I'm just curious, s'all.Also, love your new cruise and theater ballistic missiles. Still having a hard time trying to bust that shockingly huge heavy anti-air net but it was really fun to play with.

Thanks (for praise of CMs and TBMs). You can bust the anti-air net quite easily through teamwork, but the thing is you aren't supposed to fire them over at the enemies spawn, you're supposed to fire them at strategic locations on the battlefield like command points.

spetsnazmelayu wrote: speaking of which, why did you remove the suppression of enemy air defense tactical aid? It was useful enough to blind the launchers by specifically aiming the radars alone and could've been twice as useful to aim for the radars in the heavy SAM system in the new beta 6 which puts everything from launchers to radars in one whole squad.

Well, because it was unrealistic in that it could not be shot down, and overpowered. We wanted to encourage people to use cruise missiles more rather than relying overly on indestructible TA.

spetsnazmelayu wrote: and it's surprisingly tricky and awkward trying to fly the helicopters now, not to mention maneuvering. For instance, in Beta 4, I could just rise to the highest altitude simply by clicking move on the farthest space of land I could see on the screen just once but now I have to like, really put an effort to raising the altitude by clicking a lot of times all around the map just to go to the highest altitude.

Air Role Guide - Part I: The Basics (Beta 6)

spetsnazmelayu wrote: Also is there such a thing that your helicopter could crash to the ground even when the computer's yelling to raise altitude? I couldn't tell if I crashed or got hit by a SAM.

Yes, you can crash into the ground now.
I see you're not too proficient with the Air Role so far, so try to use the Attack Helicopter for Beginners rather than the Expert one.

spetsnazmelayu wrote: That reminds me, the heavy SAMs really are indeed so smart now in beta 6 that it's really a kick in the balls to the SKILLz I've been trying to hone and master during in beta 4. I really need to review your survival against SAMs again because I don't think I was ready getting hit by 3-5 patriot missiles coming down at me at once.

You'll only ever have 2 missiles fired at you at once.
If you are finding surviving from SAMs hard, read the tutorial again.

spetsnazmelayu wrote: That's all my concerns for now. By the way, thank you for answering my previous questions. I was hoping the last one already closed or deleted by now actually ;p.

Thanks for your feedback, I hope this comment helps.

Thanks for the good comments here.

To confirm what Heaney said and in addition to his points, we're releasing Beta Update 7 today with updated balancing changes to Air and Armor roles. You may find it better to work with.

For example, there is no longer a 120 second reload time for missiles on Air -- after you run out of missiles, you go back to FARP unit at spawn zone to re-arm instantly, rather than having nothing to do for 2 minutes waiting for reload.