CF_BAI
Original mod has been created by BrightCandle and shared on Github under GNU GPL v3 license. This fork will not be updated, fixed or upgraded unless necessary.
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A dynamic AI mod that adjusts the AI sub skills based on the thickness of the foliage, what the unit can see, suppression of the unit and also now takes into account followup shots.
CF_BAI now comes with a new API called the subskill Pipeline that allows multiple mods to set the units subskills at the same time without causing clashes between mods.
Can set all unit sub skills.
Uses Bushes/trees to determine how much foliage is about and reduce the units skill.
The reduction to skill is entire configurable with CBA settings.
Different Terrains can have different terrain count maximums set by default.
Each Unit sub skill can be impacted differently.
If you wish to disable the module you can do so from the configuration.
Opposing side terrain is also taken into account for vision tests,
Adds realistic vision like tests and capabilities
Extends the AI’s vision range to that similar of players unaid (around 900m)
Extends the AI’s vision range with optics to ~2KM
Takes account of a players stance, movement speed and surrounding foilage
Takes account of environmental conditions such as day/night, rain, fog
Takes account of AI awareness, equipment (binoculars, optics and nightvision) and spotting skill and time.
Takes account of the AI facing, existingKnowledge, distance and ensures a raycast.
All of the spotting variables are configurable to a fine detail, there is also a general adjustment parameter to tweak the balance of spotting indepedent of unit spotting skills
If you wish to disable the module you can do so from the configuration.
Uses the games internal detection for suppression and enhances the effect by adjusting the units subskills.
The suppression will not decay as rapidly as the base game taking 30 seconds to start dropping after bullets and 30 seconds to do so completely
A human player when shooting repeatedly at a target will adjust their fire based on where the rounds land. What this module does is simulate that by boosting the units skill after a series of shots.
Very rapid fire is ignored as is close fire.
The effect wears off when the unit changes target that is too far away from where their gained knowledge is useful.
Over many missions, we found open terrain had substantially less difficulty than combat in woodland, and Tanoa woodland is harder than Altis. The denser the woodland was the worse the situation became but it was also dependent on how big the trees were and where their branches and leaves were set. For many years we balanced this with individual missions setting skills slightly differently. CF_BAI requires very little in the way of tweaking and its purpose is to avoid per mission skill setup and to produce fair difficulty in a variety of terrain. It isn’t perfect because it uses the amount of vegetation around the AI and likely spotting player units to determine the dynamic adjustment to the AIs skill. But despite its limitations it works very well to even out the skill across different types of missions.
Since the Apex DLC the AI has had a much reduced vision range maximum when on foot unaided. Initially BI set the value to around 600m but it now stands at just 320m when at full skill. Many releases have gone by and while we tried other ways to solve the issue eventually we came to the conclusion we needed to extend that using reveal and knowsAbout commands. The detect module executes a serious of vision tests to allow the unit to see substantially further. Each vision test is a pair of values, the first being the chance to see the unit and the second being how much knowledge they would gain 0-1 (which maps to the games range of 0-4).
Be aware at the moment the detect routine has 3 flaws that I hope to address in the future. The first is that it is a player to AI spotting system currently whereas it should be side to side, so if you have friendly AI they will not be spotted or do spotting on the enemy. The second is it doesn’t perform that well, what it currently does is throttle back its checks so that its impact on the server is minimal but you may see warnings in your logs about performance issues if its cadence can’t be maintained. The third is that the fog detection does not work well and AI can currently see further than the player, so fog is not really recommended currently or set the fog impact to 100%. There may also be issues with AI’s getting enhanced vision in vehicles, technicals work but APCs might not.
The games default suppression system doesn’t have very much effect. Having tested it extensively my conclusion was whatever effect it has on the enemy is quite small and not easy to measure. It needs substantial numbers of bullets to get the suppressive effect to 1.0 and maintain it and yet the enemy can still seemingly return fire with full effect killing you easily when fully suppressed. This isn’t realistic, an enemy under sustained suppressive fire should be hiding rather than returning fire and they should also be quite a bit less effective.
So just like with the subskills CF_BAI now reduces the AI’s skills based on the suppressive value of the unit. While the mod uses the games suppression value it doesn’t directly translate it, instead it uses it as a way to detect nearby shots and increases the value and sustains it for longer with larger decays up to a minute before the unit fully recovers. This at least makes the unit struggle to find who is suppressing him and return effective fire while suppressed. You can reduce any of the units skills and the mod by default reduces skills to 50% and 20% of their original values, which for most settings should make a suppressed unit quite ineffective.
Whenever you set the AIs skill you are trying to balance a variety of aspects. What we found was that players would repeak the same corner because the chance of getting hit was the same as the first time they looked around the corner. Yet a human on the other end is going to be prepared for that and much more accurately fire on followup shots. If you make the AI too accurate to begin with there is no warning, too easy and there is no challenge and you can’t become pinned. What this module does is punish the player for repeaking, it allows players to become pinned behind cover and also for snipers to appear to zone in and become great. The AI will gain skill in aiming with each successive shot, a 5–10% boost is pretty dramatic but the more you put the more these impacts will play out in your games.
CF_BAI can run on a server or locally and if its on both it will only mostly on the server when playing online. It must be installed client and server side. It can be installed with the standard mod installations.
If you wish to modify the way the mod is configured then CBA Settings is used and pressing escape in game and going to “addon options” will provide a mechanism to change the values. In multiplayer games the values on the server will be the only ones that apply.
The mod is compatible with ASR_AI, Vcom and Lambs_danger.fsm. Just make sure you do not use the other mods mechanisms for setting the unit subskills and also use the CF_BAI ones, change either but not both.
Description above has been copied from the original mod, back in 2021. Nothing should be different in current state of Arma 3 and mods mentioned before.
