Bots and Spectating Thread - WIC: Modern Warfare Mod for World in Conflict

Hey blahdy,

I just want to say thank you for all the work you've done. I have spent a lot of time experimenting with this mod because it is very cool. I have a couple of questions for you that correlate with each other. But first let me mention that I don't play with other people on your mod. I actually am one of those weird human beings who just enjoys spectating bots going against each other. I'm not sure how to go about spectating human vs. human games, so I just watch the bots. So here are the questions:

1. I've noticed that the bots do not use many of their available units in the game. For example, a bot playing the BLUEFOR Infantry Role will always only purchase some "Infantry Fireteam (Anti-Tank) units" and some "Armored Personnel Carrier" units. This bot will never buy any "Infantry Fireteam (Anti-Air)" or anti-infantry units or anything else for that matter. An interesting side note is that for some reason bots can purchase Mechanized Infantry in the Infantry Role, but I as a human cannot do that. The Mechanized Infantry option is not there on my reinforcements page. Regardless, another example is a bot playing the BLUEFOR Armor Role: this bot will almost certainly only purchase "Main Battle Tank (M1A2 SEPv2)" units, and nothing else. I won't go into details with the REDFOR bots, because it's the same dilemma. I can think of three possible solutions: try to find a way to get around this dilemma myself, you fix this issue in your next mod patches, or I just play with other humans. Which solution do you think is best?

2. The A.I. in the Air Role is still ridiculously unintelligent. Generally speaking, all of the A.I. is still questionable. blahdy, would you drive a tank straight down a road knowing there is an enemy anti-tank crew right down the street? Do you think if there was more diversity in the units used by bots that this may mitigate some A.I. stupidity, or is there another solution involving mod changes? Or, like I said before, should I just suck it up and play with other humans?

Like I said before, thanks for everything. If nothing were to change from now, I'd be content with your mod. Great job.

apapete wrote:

Hey blahdy,

I just want to say thank you for all the work you've done. I have spent a lot of time experimenting with this mod because it is very cool. I have a couple of questions for you that correlate with each other. But first let me mention that I don't play with other people on your mod. I actually am one of those weird human beings who just enjoys spectating bots going against each other. I'm not sure how to go about spectating human vs. human games, so I just watch the bots. So here are the questions:

1. I've noticed that the bots do not use many of their available units in the game. For example, a bot playing the BLUEFOR Infantry Role will always only purchase some "Infantry Fireteam (Anti-Tank) units" and some "Armored Personnel Carrier" units. This bot will never buy any "Infantry Fireteam (Anti-Air)" or anti-infantry units or anything else for that matter. An interesting side note is that for some reason bots can purchase Mechanized Infantry in the Infantry Role, but I as a human cannot do that. The Mechanized Infantry option is not there on my reinforcements page. Regardless, another example is a bot playing the BLUEFOR Armor Role: this bot will almost certainly only purchase "Main Battle Tank (M1A2 SEPv2)" units, and nothing else. I won't go into details with the REDFOR bots, because it's the same dilemma. I can think of three possible solutions: try to find a way to get around this dilemma myself, you fix this issue in your next mod patches, or I just play with other humans. Which solution do you think is best?

2. The A.I. in the Air Role is still ridiculously unintelligent. Generally speaking, all of the A.I. is still questionable. blahdy, would you drive a tank straight down a road knowing there is an enemy anti-tank crew right down the street? Do you think if there was more diversity in the units used by bots that this may mitigate some A.I. stupidity, or is there another solution involving mod changes? Or, like I said before, should I just suck it up and play with other humans?

Like I said before, thanks for everything. If nothing were to change from now, I'd be content with your mod. Great job.

Hi,

The AI is definitely something that needs more work in the game. Right now, the CommanderAI (CAI) system in WiC is the most unstable portion of the game engine itself (any complex decision tree can often cause the game to go into unintended while() loop while running CAI, causing the game to freeze and requiring process to be halted).

To prevent game from freezing with the CAI loop bug above, we had to make AI as simple and dumb as possible, while without making it extremely 'too dumb' if you know what I mean. So you've mentioned infantry -- AI players actually use a different infantry squad unit that is unavailable to human players. The AI's specialized infantry squad comes with both AA and AT capabilities all in one squad. The reason for this, is if we have the AI player try to purchase both AA and AT teams separately, it often gets confused and freezes up the game due to the CAI loop bug. So, a simple workaround was to just give one infantry unit AI can buy that has full AT+AA capabilities all in on. Same thing with armor -- AI players are dumb enough that the only unit that will last few seconds longer on the battlefield is probably the one with the most skin, so MBT it is.

The only place where there is 'some' intelligence built into the AI is for support and air AIs -- for example, support bot will setup a SAM network pretty perfect from the beginning, and this does not require the AI player to do anything, because the mod's own IADS script automates the AA engagement. As for air, the only intelligence we have is that helicopter air player will try to stand back and stop when firing a Hellfire missile, before continuing to close in on the target. The AI helicopters can be quite annoying if not dealt with, and often times you need to be under S-300 cover to stay away from AI's Hellfire spam. But, the AI does not have any intelligence built in on avoiding SAM and air threats against itself -- it will at best flare when attacked but that's about it.

Long story short, I'm not sure if there is a whole lot of room available for us to make the AI better, as CAI behavior is not easily moddable and requires lot of man hours just to review the code and patch the game with little to no gain. Alternatively, probably a better way to improve the AI is to develop MW Mod specific single player missions, where AI actions are scripted from the start. Scripted mission would certainly perform and play better as its behavior and unit selection set is fully programmed and scripted in advance, so it wouldn't cause the game to freeze up, as it won't have to do any dynamic calculations.

Edited by: blahdy

Alright. Thank you. Yeah, most of my fascination with this mod has been the anhCheats, where I can place US units in different combat scenarios and see what happens. Thanks for the response.