Comments on the current vietnam pack v1
I've been trying to make a dynamic SEAL team mission, and as such I've been experiementing with AI settings, armor scripts, etc.
I've been impressed, actually, with the behavior of the troops and their weapons. The special forces men kneel down often to take aimed shots, the machine gunners throw supressing fire over a large area (full auto with the SEB M60! whooo!), and troops with M16s or Car15s take rapid single shots, pumping them into enemies, while the grenadiers take out large numbers of troops. I was surprised, but the fact that the troops behaved like this gave me great hope for the SEB nam pack.
Oh yes, and VC RPGs flying into clumps of my troops are scary as shit.
And that ROCKS.
One of the problems I initially noticed, was that my troops got cut down too randomly. I've done quite a bit of research on the SEALs and SOG troopers, and I knew this was mostly innacurate. They don't just die all that often, they get wounded as peopel have said... I've experimented with combinations of mainly four options to produce less robots, more personality, and have chances of survival increase.:
1) Allowfleeing
2) Armor script
3) Skill level
4) Weapon loadout
I've thus fashioned a number of characters based on these options, and I seem to have created troops that survive longer, yet when the chips are down and the odds are against them, they still have a tendency to die.
Allowfleeing is the 'courage' script that BIS made. A value of 0 creates a rambo that never moves from his position, and a value of 1 means they always flee. Can this be implimented in the CPP? The units that flee in a normal flashpoint island, while running through woods or open ground, have this tendency to die. Painfully. However, in the thick Ia Drang jungle, what with reduced accuracy and lots of impenetrable jungle, makes for a more tactically aware enemy that isn't constantly holed up waiting for a shot, so you can move more freely knowing that the enemy won't constantly have their gun trained in your direction, waiting for the perfect moment to kill you. They aren't ALL sniper types, after all. When set to higher values, they can sill do stupid things, like runing away and getting cut down.
The armor script (available on OFPEC) allows you to make a unit have an armor value above his normal, by setting the damage and resurrecting if nescessary. It's a little funky, and I've found that a rating of 1.02 works wonders. Using this, a troop can take on average 3-4 assault rifle hits before they are crippled (crawling), and another 1-2 before they eventually die. This increased resilliance to damage *works really well*, and should be included at the unit level in the next version. If a unit is in a position where they're going to die anyway (coming around a corner into a bundle of the enemy, or getting ambushed, etc.), being able to take 5-7 shots instead of just 2-3 makes them much more likely to survive with random shots, but still able to die in bad situations.
The skill level (not suprisingly) plays a large part in unit's performance. Things like reaction time, etc. are factored in, to the point that a skilled AI can take on a larger force. However, without the armor or allowfleeing to a small degree, the opfor gets a lucky shot and the skill is thus wasted. There's a tendency in mapmaking to make all units have a high skill, and this presents problems.
Weapon loadout obviously plays a huge part in performance, determining what the unit wants to use, and when. For example, DKM's Mossberg 500 shotgun, when used on a point man SpecFor unit, four shell loads, six grenades, a high armor, with medium skill and allowfleeing of .5, makes for a smart, resillient point man that shoots the shotgun up close, chucks grenades afar, runs away when he's cornered, gets mortally wounded but may not nescessarily die.
Also, for the love of god, turn super AI off. Makes a big difference in far-off sniping. To make units tougher and smarter, play with the options I described, but having super AI on means they can detect you from afar in pitch black and snipe you in the head with an SKS when their skill level is zero.
It makes things more realistic, because you can actually sneak up on dumb vc.
For example, I played a test mission where I placed about 50 standard VC in groups around an Ia drang village, with four-five standard VC recon squads. I didn't change any of their values, no allowfleeing, etc. I then placed a standard 6 man spec for squad, with a modified point man unit (shotgun, grenades), and gave them a seek & dest waypoint in the middle of the town. This was night, of course, but the troops got cut down very quickly, cut down by usually single shots. I did the same thing but gave the troops all a full skill, and the results were quite similar. They died. I then gave the spec for troops an allowfleeing of .3 across the board, and an armor rating of 1.02. The results were quite surprising. When the troops originally were pinned down by the massed 20-30 VC, they got pinned down and died while assaulting. However, the armor and allowfleeing extended their shelf life, so that once they broke into the grous and killed the leaders and a few, the VC were overwhelmed, didn't take as many shots, ran away, did dumb things, while the seals rushed in and took them out. In the initial assault the enemy groups were arrayed correctly and took out one member and mortally wounded two, but the seals recovered and managed to kill the full enemy presence with two dead and three seriously wounded. I was not taking part, just observing.
Now, why did this happen so much differently? I tracked the number of times my troops got hit, and after the initial assualt, they weren't attacked too much, once the enemy was routed. However, the allowfleeing forced the troops to move when being fired upon, and the armor gave them an extra edge.Both of these commands made them use the skill rating I gave them more effectively, taking out all the enemy. The battle did, however, take appx. 10 minutes, with small groups of each falling back and reassaulting. Kind of interesting accounting for the fact that the attackers had a seek and destroy waypoint and the defenders all had hold. However, these two options didn't guarantee success. I tried it again with the default skill settings, and though they took out half the enemy, they eventually died.
So what's my point?
More armor and the courage function allow more of a skill gap between units, the firefights are longer, and the troops act more human. These increased values allow the units to survive longer and be able to actually display tactical inteligence. If they're going to die, they're going to die anyway (for example, AI taking an RPG it, being mortally wounded, and then crawling into a hut with a guy with an RPD.).
The end of long winded case study.
Topic: SEB Nam Pack 2.0 (Read 185413 times)