In Development: AI Improvements

[Qbicle 98]

Article link:

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-ai-improvements

Quote

Another common piece of feedback we are regularly receiving mentions the behavior of Armored Warfare’s AI opponents – their movement and shooting habits.

These reports often mention “cheating” when firing or the strange behavior where the bots would drive rear-first towards players. To address some of these issues, we’ll be taking a look at the AI aiming mechanism in one of the upcoming smaller updates during this season. Specifically:

First and foremost, we’ll be improving the AI targeting mechanics. At short-to-medium distances, AI opponents will run a check against your armor and internal modules to determine, which of them can be damaged effectively, depending on how protected they are from the AI’s point of view. Based on their chances to cause damage, the opponents will then take a pick.

Please note that there are some internal modifiers in place – for example, an AI opponent is more likely to attack your penetrable side or frontal armor than directly aim at your ammo rack. These modifiers are made with player experience in mind – we want to make the AI aiming process more logical, not toxic. Having AI immediately target your ammo rack area the second it becomes exposed would be possible, but not much fun.

At longer distances, the AI opponents will not be performing the internal component check and will simply target your hull or turret as a whole.

Now, you may be wondering how this mechanic will affect the most hated AI feature of all – ATGMs. To address that issue, we’ll be considerably increasing the AI ATGM noise value, far beyond that of player ATGMs. In other words, AI missiles will be considerably less accurate, making it easier to survive when fired upon.

Furthermore:

AI opponents will no longer target unmanned turrets as often as they did before. Even if this might not seem that way at first glance, this is actually an improvement for affected player vehicles. Unmanned turrets take reduced damage, but typically also have very thin armor, just like in real life (after all, that’s why the reduced damage rule was implemented). By having the AI aim more at the armored hull, the vehicles with unmanned turrets will be able to survive more AI shots.

AI opponents will turn their front towards their intended target. This will not happen under all circumstances, but if an AI opponent targets you, it will attempt to face you with its frontal armor. This is actually something that has been intended all along – the “rear-first” movement is a bug that we will be fixing. This change will, however, happen further down the road than the rest.

We’ll be fixing other issues too, such as:

• AI opponents will also be able to make use of the Ready Rack mechanism properly
• Under very specific circumstances (tied to an ammo rack explosion), a bot can fire much faster than intended
• A few AI vehicles don’t fire ATGMs even though they should
• Sometimes, crew kills on AI vehicles don’t count for mission purposes, this issue is getting fixed
• The incorrect aiming and firing process of the bots that are using Chinese MBTs (the issue where the bot is aiming somewhat away from you but you get hit nonetheless)
• AI targeting optimizations will also lead to less lags and increased server performance

Further down the road, we are planning to introduce even deeper changes to the AI behavior, but it’s an ongoing process rather than one large feature. We will inform you of more when the time is right.

 

TL;DR version:

• Bots will be less effective at sniping weakspots from long range
• Bots will priortise aiming at vehicle hull over unmanned turrets
• Bots will try not to drive backwards towards players
• BMP-3, BMP-3M, and BMD-4 will fire missiles again (confirmed by SS on Discord)
• Bots driving vehicles with ready racks will use them (e.g. Stingrays, Merkavas)
• ATGMs fired by bots will have greater noise value than those fired by the players

 

It's hard to say how changes AI targeting mechanics will be like in practice regarding weakspots. There already is an immediate concern where "new changes" may become new bugs and end up breaking more stuff at launch, just like the smoke and spotting mechanics in 0.32.

Stingrays and Merkavas will become a bit more dangerous they manage to flank. BMP-3s and BMD-4 getting their missiles back is an exception to the rule where bots can't use gun launched ATGMs.

[Haswell 294]

Bots being able to use RR properly may potentially turn currently meh vehicles into pretty big threats. Stingrays and Merks in particular will have the potential to delete unsuspecting pubbies much like Swingfires do, since they can dump out 2k damage in about 10 seconds. RCR and XM1A3 will also be able to double tap people.

ATGM noise changes MIGHT make low tiers slightly more bearable, but I highly doubt Swingfires will start missing.

[LeoAegisMaximus 6]

what gets me about lower tier atgms they fucking engage low attack attitude vectors, I've seriously seen swingfires and sabres perfectly fire their atgms  on the move homing in on lower plates.  

[Katsumoto 11]

The one thing I see that I going to cause a lot of people a lot if pain is the way the short to medium range engagements will work.

I wonder how many people that get away with face hugging now get deleted back to the garage after the change 

[Komitadjie 13]

Definitely makes me concerned about the tanks that have weakspots anywhere on the front.  MBT brawling could get *really* painful, really fast in anything that doesn't have flawless frontal armor.

[Zemosu 1]

11 hours ago, Katsumoto said:

The one thing I see that I going to cause a lot of people a lot if pain is the way the short to medium range engagements will work.

I wonder how many people that get away with face hugging now get deleted back to the garage after the change 

Man those guys are annoying. but facehugging might save them if the weakest part of their tanks is the lower plate 

[JintoLin 9]

21 hours ago, Haswell said:

ATGM noise changes MIGHT make low tiers slightly more bearable, but I highly doubt Swingfires will start missing.

They would need to have the bots actually steer the SACLOS missiles like the players have to. Current bot missiles have no noise and are immune to soft kill APS systems. They need to fix this first.

I would like to see the bots loose their shared vision. Each bot must spot it's own targets, no help from other bots, or limit the shared vision to only bots that are within say 20m of that bot. The players could also use better indicators for the shooters location. Right now I see bot aim at me and don't fire until I am spotted, but they will shot a weak point with laser accuracy the instant I become visible.

They also need to fix how the SACLOS guided missiles work. All you need to do is put the cross hairs were you want the missile to hit, then it does. You do not need to over compensate for either your movement or the targets. Also if you lose sight of the missile, you can't control the missile, no steering around objects. Current in game missiles guidance seem to be MCLOS which in incorrect for all missiles. All missiles in game are FAF or SACLOS weapon systems IRL.

[MK_Regular 24]

• The reduced effectiveness at long range weakspot sniping is definitely a plus, but I'm not sure that it will have a massive overall effect (how long range is "long range"?)
• The bit about not shooting unmanned turrets might make a few vehicles (notably the Termis and T-15) even more hilariously OP in PvE, but that will probably depend on how much penetration the guns the bots are using have
• Bots not driving backwards will make them seem smarter but will make them harder to kill in some instances, I probably shouldn't have gotten used to abusing this bug
• BMP-3/3M and BMD-4 not spamming 100mm HE is something to look forward to
• Ready rack usage will make Stingrays and Merks go from being a free lunch to being quite nasty, I expect more than a few pubbies will get bursted by one of these and go complain on the discord
• The increase in ATGM noise will hopefully make low-tier missile boats less annoying, but I'm not going to hold my breath

18 hours ago, Komitadjie said:

Definitely makes me concerned about the tanks that have weakspots anywhere on the front.  MBT brawling could get *really* painful, really fast in anything that doesn't have flawless frontal armor.

*Looks at all of the tanks that have turret ring weakspots* oh dear.

4 hours ago, JintoLin said:

All missiles in game are FAF or SACLOS weapon systems IRL.

9M14 "Malyutka" (and SS.11, which is not in the game iirc) are MCLOS, so they are modeled correctly. But yes, every other missile that isn't fire-and-forget has incorrect guidance modeling including:

• MILAN (wire-guided SACLOS)
• Swingfire (wire-guided SACLOS)
• Late versions of Malyutka and derivatives (wire-guided SACLOS)
• 9K111 "Fagot" (wire-guided SACLOS)
• 9M113 "Konkurs" (wire-guided SACLOS)
• 9M119 "Refleks" (beam-riding SACLOS)
• 9M120 "Ataka" (radio-guided SACLOS)
• BGM-71 TOW (wire-guided SACLOS)
• 9M113 "Kornet" (beam-riding SACLOS)
• ZT3 Ingwe (beam-riding SACLOS)
• HOT (SACLOS of some kind)

It's a bit trickier to model a guidance system that automatically leads a target rather than a system that just chases an aim point. Currently, all of the SACLOS and fire-and forget missiles in the game chase the aim point rather than leading the aim point to try and intercept it. I'm not sure what the balance implications of correctly modeled SACLOS and fire-and-forget guidance would be, but it would probably make missiles a lot easier to use in PvP and would make missile bots quite a bit deadlier. 

[JintoLin 9]

21 hours ago, MK_Regular said:

It's a bit trickier to model a guidance system that automatically leads a target rather than a system that just chases an aim point.

I don't see how. That is how the bot missiles current work. The bot tank locks onto a point on the player vehicle, then the bot tank fires. Then a second bot guides the missile to the target ignoring current soft kill APS.