AI: None PLz.

[AgentMongoose]

Back on to the civies bring ai, for hose of you who font know:
in Arma 2 you can talk to ai controlled civs/soldiers through a set of comanes on the action menu. Simple as the conversations may be the ai can tell you things like where hostile soldiers are, in the town / not in the town. If programed right they can say things like "my sister in town x is scared she has been seeing more and more insurgants/Taliban/Brits/etc going through the area.". Or "the soldiers that were here had tanks with them."

real intel gathering vs kill shit to find shit.

[Alex123]

First, never played Arma, just read stuff about it.

Though AI can make a lot of sense. Not only as civilians in insurgency or any other game mode. Taking into account the large mapsizes, you could spawn into AI "body's" as they are being transported to the front line. Instead of having some spawn point where you materialise out of thin air the team has to work to get soldiers to the front lines.
This way the team/you should keep an eye out on brining in reinforcements safely to the front line, which are at first AI's in choppers/planes/apc's. Once the AI disembarks at their destination dead players can spawn in their body's and continue with the action. Saves them long boring trips in transports, gives more action to the players and introduces "lines of supply".

And the opposing team has a chance to disrupt said lines of supply if the other team foolishly let's them land or head to a hot LZ. The transports themselves though should be operated by real players.

AI's should not be able to take part in the action, they just disembark at a safe LZ waiting to be taken over by real players.

[Salah ad Din]

Originally Posted by AgentMongoose

Back on to the civies bring ai, for hose of you who font know:
in Arma 2 you can talk to ai controlled civs/soldiers through a set of comanes on the action menu. Simple as the conversations may be the ai can tell you things like where hostile soldiers are, in the town / not in the town. If programed right they can say things like "my sister in town x is scared she has been seeing more and more insurgants/Taliban/Brits/etc going through the area.". Or "the soldiers that were here had tanks with them."
real intel gathering vs kill shit to find shit.

That +1

Originally Posted by Alex123

Though AI can make a lot of sense. Not only as civilians in insurgency or any other game mode. Taking into account the large mapsizes, you could spawn into AI "body's" as they are being transported to the front line. Instead of having some spawn point where you materialise out of thin air the team has to work to get soldiers to the front lines.
This way the team/you should keep an eye out on brining in reinforcements safely to the front line, which are at first AI's in choppers/planes/apc's. Once the AI disembarks at their destination dead players can spawn in their body's and continue with the action. Saves them long boring trips in transports, gives more action to the players and introduces "lines of supply".

And the opposing team has a chance to disrupt said lines of supply if the other team foolishly let's them land or head to a hot LZ. The transports themselves though should be operated by real players.

AI's should not be able to take part in the action, they just disembark at a safe LZ waiting to be taken over by real players.

that's an interesting thought. I was thinking about a game mechanic some time ago. Players/Commander have to build Reinforcement Structures like Barracks or Guard Posts. These Structures need to be filled with Ticket Points by the Commander. When a structure contains points (representing soldiers stationed there) a player can spawn there using up one point.
The main base is the only structure that can generate Tickets (reinforcements from elsewhere) and these need to be shipped to the front line. E.g. the commander uses an interface to send 50 Points to a FOB. This action will spawn, say 5 AI Trucks that will start moving towards the FOB in a convoy. When they reach the FOB the points get transferred to it and people can spawn.

Different structures can contain a different amount of tickets (Barracks 100 points, FOB 50 points, Guardpost 10 Points). That would allow the representation of overrunning an enemy position simply because you killed off all the defenders and cut off their supplies by destroying the trucks en route to it. Of course, players might do reinforcements by airlift (a Blackhawk could be filled with up to 15 tickets, a Chinook with 50 tickets).

Just a thought.

[clueless_noob]

Originally Posted by Deadfast

I'm sorry, but what are you guys even arguing about?

We were arguing about if there is any popular public servers available, running human vs. human, or PvP in ARMA people's terms, game mode in addition to the more popular human vs. AI. What we learnt is that there is indeed some servers running 100+ player game modes in human vs. human configuration with the only downside being the game mode itself, which, according to its description, I'm probably not going to like. Your mileage may vary, as with any other personal opinion.

[clueless_noob]

I support this idea where AI characters are used, but limited to atmospheric/placeholder tasks only and leave the actual fighting to the players. I've seen this type of suggestions in the forums, but due to limitations of BF2 engine it was impossible to implement them.

Having AI control civilians to bring cities alive in insurgency type of scenarios sounds something I'd like to see. As well as intelligence gathering by questioning, because I'm against the current kill shit to find shit (thanks AgentMongoose!) style of reconnaissance. I'm not sure how it would work game play wise, but it would be worth trying now that we can actually have it.

[Blakeman]

With civilians I could see reconnaissance taking a more important role as recon teams patrol around sectors with possible threats to find them and direct the strikes of their team against confirmed taliban strongholds rather than civilian areas.

The ability to perhaps turn the local civilian population against the taliban would be another neat feature, win their hearts and minds and they help you keep the taliban out of their town or area.

I have a feeling that including civilian drivers would make any convoy a bit more cautious when entering an area, you wouldn't know right away that the car coming down the road actually has an insurgent with a 1 ton bomb in the trunk.

[direct_death]

im pretty sure its also possible to give certain insurgents maps that have markings on them. That way you kill a guy, go up to his body, check his backpack, find map with AMMO IS HERE GUISE LOL written on some point, then report back. That and going up to civs and asking if theyve seen anyone about.

[BeerHunter]

It's quit apparent that quit a few have never played ArmA2 SP and have no idea how effective the AI can be.

The thing is , you are the commander so you have to issue orders to them as you would in real life , after that they look after themselves. If you're simply follower and not a leader , then don't expect the AI to do the job for you.

I find the the AI to be far more co-operative and reliable than a lot of online players.

Don't think in terms of BF2 /Cod etc. AI when you think of ArmA2's AI. After all , they take up an entire core of your CPU.

Sure they have some faults but the BI team is constantly improving them. BTW , ArmA2 is patched up to 1.05 with a 1.06 patch in the works so the demo can;t be used anymore to "evaluate" ArmA2.

Be interesting to see if some of the great AI scripted mods out there will work with ArmA2.

[goguapsy]

It WILL be interesting for the British forces to interrogate AI civilians at villages concerning enemy sightings.

[clueless_noob]

Originally Posted by BeerHunter

I find the the AI to be far more co-operative and reliable than a lot of online players

Does the AI characters have really weird sense of humor, like much of the online players in PR seem to have? I mean, I've had some of my best laughs in ages from PR server's global chat.