Knowledge sharing between groups?

[ceeeb]

Heya OFPEC ppl,
 One very quick question - I seem to remember reading Suma write something about groups sharing knowledge about enemies/targets in ArmA. However, I have not seen any evidence of this in my testing tonight, and cannot find where he wrote it...

Can anyone confirm that this either way in vanilla ArmA?

cheers,
 fasad

[Spooner]

Members of a group tell each other about what they know, but I'm not aware of groups ever talking to each other in vanilla. Something like GroupLink II Plus! does this very thing for you though.

[ceeeb]

Thanks, I should have made it clear that I meant sharing knowledge between groups. For my purposes I am happy without the engine automatically sharing knowledge between groups. I just want to make sure what I'm seeing is correct...

[Wolfrug]

If you put a group on a Guard waypoint, that group will share knowledge with all other friendly groups in the area - or, in other words, if a nearby group spots an enemy, that group can call in the group assigned to the Guard waypoint to help. Other than that, I don't know of any automatic information-sharing between groups...maybe for ArmA II? 

Wolfrug out.

[h-]

I seem to remember reading Suma write something about groups sharing knowledge about enemies/targets in ArmA.

Me too..

(part of Sumas post, talking about a specific mission hence the truck/ZSU references..)

If you fire at ZSU you get a different result than firing at the truck, because:

* the ZSU is located in such a way that Group 3 has a direct visibility to it

* the ZSU makes quite strong explosion when destroyed

Therefore, what happens is:

* The Group 3 sees a friendly vehicle was destroyed, and comes to a conclusion there is some enemy somewhere (this raises the knowsAbout to 1.5 for them)

* The said group reports its findings to a commanding center

* Groups 1 and 2 hear the loud explosion, and come to a conclusion there is some unknown combatant in the area

* They are communicating the commanding center to check if they have any information about a military presence around that explosion

* The center confirms there has been an enemy activity detected there, as a result, Groups 1 and 2 raise their knowsAbout to 1.5

Did a fast test and it happens exactly like he describes, although the far way hearing based groups still get their knowsabout up the same exact moment as the seeing group, but nevertheless it happens.
Also stupidly enough it has to be a 'live' ammo that destroys the vehicle for the AI to care about it, meaning it has to be shot by some entity (I used satchels, didn't test spawned shells though); if you setdamage 1 a vehicle the AI couldn't care less..

[ceeeb]

Thanks all for the replies, I shall investigate further!

edit:I can confirm h-'s observations about the vehicle explosion.

However, this simple test case shows no info sharing between groups:
- 1 friendly unit (player)
- enemy group A (with no ammo) can clearly see me (knowsAbout 4)
- enemy group B cannot see me, and is about 100 meters from group A
Group B's knowsAbout of the player remains at 0 indefinitely, even if I fire upon group A, assuming group B do not detect the play on their own.

It seems the sharing behaviour is dependant on really loud actions (eg, satchel, destroying a vehicle)

[Kendo J]

I sent you a Pm about Gen Barrons Inforshare script I use on OFPr. this addresses the exact same issue on OFP... however, you will have to find Gen Barron or convert it yourself....

Regards
Kendo

[ceeeb]

Ah, sorry Kendo J, I haven't used OFPEC forums for a long time, I didn't notice the PM notification.

As I have said, I am aware of the Grouplink script, but I am not looking for a solution to AI group's not sharing knowledge. I just want to know how the default AI works for my own scripting purposes. Cheers.