Edit History

Edit: just a quick disclaimer. The information here represents my current understanding of the agro system in AW. I'm not 100% certain that the information here is completely accurate, so there may be a few things that I either missed or got wrong. If you find something that isn't written here or indicates that some of the information here is wrong, please let me know so I can update it.

There was a dev article a while back (almost 2 years ago, right around the time that Heroic spec ops was released) that explained the rules for AI agro. According to the article, the vehicle that the AIs target is based on 2 things:

1. The player in the heaviest and closest vehicle
2. The player with the highest aggro (with aggro being generated by dealing damage to bots and deflecting the return fire according to the article)

When an AI has not fired a shot and not been shot at in return, it defaults to the first setting (this can be seen when spotting a fresh AI vehicle, note how they typically face the nearest MBT even when said MBT is behind multiple layers of cover). I believe the equation that determines each player's proto-agro value takes the form of:

ProtoAgro = VehicleWeight / Distance

This means that a decrease in your vehicle's weight will allow you to get closer to an AI before it targets you. For example, if a player in a 50-ton vehicle is 250m away from an AI, another player in a 30-ton vehicle would need to be less than 150m away in order for the AI to decide to focus on them instead of the player in the 50-ton vehicle, while a player in a 10-ton vehicle would need to be less than 50m away for the AI to focus on them. Of course, this assumes that distance has a proportional effect on which player is focused when in is entirely possible that the effect of weight or distance is squared (placing a larger emphasis on heavier or closer vehicles, respectively). Some tests would need to be done to determine exactly what the effects of vehicle weight and distance are.

Once an AI has either fired a shot (and had the shot bounce) or taken a damaging hit, the AI will change to the 2nd setting and focus on whatever player (that is currently in their line of fire) has the highest total of damage dealt to that AI and deflected return fire (I'm not sure if there are any modifiers for the total that change the weighting of the dealt/deflected damage stats). If there are no players in line of fire that have damaged the bot or deflected a shot from the bot, the bot will go back to the first setting. It is worth noting that each AI has a separate agro counter, meaning that agroing one bot will not agro any nearby bots (although they will still try to shoot you if you get spotted and have high agro on them).

As far as I can tell, agro will only ever go up, which means that deflecting a several thousand damage worth of autocannon AP from single AFV in an MBT will all but insure that the AI that fired those rounds will never attempt to attack a player that isn't you (as long as it can continue shooting at you). If you break contact with the AI, it will immediately begin attacking the player with the next highest agro total that it has line of sight on (like that TD that got a bit too close and got spotted while shooting up the AI), but will go back to attacking you if it regains contact with you.

What does all of this mean? If you want to minimize the damage you take from bots:

• Let someone with armour be the first one spotted, they can deflect damage and will draw more agro with every shot they deflect
• Try to shoot at the bot that the tanking player is shooting at, they are drawing more agro from that bot than the others
• Don't outpace the agro drawn by the player tanking the damage, otherwise the bots you shot up will try to shoot at you instead. It is easier to outpace the agro for a bot with low DPM (e.g. Challengers) than it is to outpace the agro for a high-DPM bot (e.g. Termi or T-15), so pick your targets carefully
• If you start taking fire, fall back and let the bots go back to shooting at the player who was tanking damage. You can take this time to relocate to a position where you will be less likely to be spotted or will be able to better support your team for the next stage of the mission

Conversely, if you're in an MBT and want to minimize the damage your team takes from bots:

• Make sure you're the first one spotted, any shots you deflect will make the bots that fired them less likely to shoot at your teammates
• Focus on the bots that need to die, this will make them less likely to shoot at your teammates when your teammates decide to shoot at it
• Do not break line of sight with the bots if any of your soft-skinned teammates are spotted, otherwise the bots will start shooting up your teammates
• If a bot starts shooting at someone else, shoot it to draw its agro back to you

There was a dev article a while back (almost 2 years ago, right around the time that Heroic spec ops was released) that explained the rules for AI agro. According to the article, the vehicle that the AIs target is based on 2 things:

1. The player in the heaviest and closest vehicle
2. The player with the highest aggro (with aggro being generated by dealing damage to bots and deflecting the return fire according to the article)

When an AI has not fired a shot and not been shot at in return, it defaults to the first setting (this can be seen when spotting a fresh AI vehicle, note how they typically face the nearest MBT even when said MBT is behind multiple layers of cover). I believe the equation that determines each player's proto-agro value takes the form of:

ProtoAgro = VehicleWeight / Distance

This means that a decrease in your vehicle's weight will allow you to get closer to an AI before it targets you. For example, if a player in a 50-ton vehicle is 250m away from an AI, another player in a 30-ton vehicle would need to be less than 150m away in order for the AI to decide to focus on them instead of the player in the 50-ton vehicle, while a player in a 10-ton vehicle would need to be less than 50m away for the AI to focus on them. Of course, this assumes that distance has a proportional effect on which player is focused when in is entirely possible that the effect of weight or distance is squared (placing a larger emphasis on heavier or closer vehicles, respectively). Some tests would need to be done to determine exactly what the effects of vehicle weight and distance are.

Once an AI has either fired a shot (and had the shot bounce) or taken a damaging hit, the AI will change to the 2nd setting and focus on whatever player (that is currently in their line of fire) has the highest total of damage dealt to that AI and deflected return fire (I'm not sure if there are any modifiers for the total that change the weighting of the dealt/deflected damage stats). If there are no players in line of fire that have damaged the bot or deflected a shot from the bot, the bot will go back to the first setting. It is worth noting that each AI has a separate agro counter, meaning that agroing one bot will not agro any nearby bots (although they will still try to shoot you if you get spotted and have high agro on them).

As far as I can tell, agro will only ever go up, which means that deflecting a several thousand damage worth of autocannon AP from single AFV in an MBT will all but insure that the AI that fired those rounds will never attempt to attack a player that isn't you (as long as it can continue shooting at you). If you break contact with the AI, it will immediately begin attacking the player with the next highest agro total that it has line of sight on (like that TD that got a bit too close and got spotted while shooting up the AI), but will go back to attacking you if it regains contact with you.

What does all of this mean? If you want to minimize the damage you take from bots:

• Let someone with armour be the first one spotted, they can deflect damage and will draw more agro with every shot they deflect
• Try to shoot at the bot that the tanking player is shooting at, they are drawing more agro from that bot than the others
• Don't outpace the agro drawn by the player tanking the damage, otherwise the bots you shot up will try to shoot at you instead. It is easier to outpace the agro for a bot with low DPM (e.g. Challengers) than it is to outpace the agro for a high-DPM bot (e.g. Termi or T-15), so pick your targets carefully
• If you start taking fire, fall back and let the bots go back to shooting at the player who was tanking damage. You can take this time to relocate to a position where you will be less likely to be spotted or will be able to better support your team for the next stage of the mission

Conversely, if you're in an MBT and want to minimize the damage your team takes from bots:

• Make sure you're the first one spotted, any shots you deflect will make the bots that fired them less likely to shoot at your teammates
• Focus on the bots that need to die, this will make them less likely to shoot at your teammates when your teammates decide to shoot at it
• Do not break line of sight with the bots if any of your soft-skinned teammates are spotted, otherwise the bots will start shooting up your teammates
• If a bot starts shooting at someone else, shoot it to draw its agro back to you

There was a dev article a while back (almost 2 years ago, right around the time that Heroic spec ops was released) that explained the rules for AI agro. According to the article, the vehicle that the AIs target is based on 2 things:

1. The player in the heaviest and closest vehicle
2. The player with the highest aggro (with aggro being generated by dealing damage to bots and deflecting the return fire according to the article)

When an AI has not fired a shot and not been shot at in return, it defaults to the first setting (this can be seen when spotting a fresh AI vehicle, note how they typically face the nearest MBT even when said MBT is behind multiple layers of cover). I believe the equation that determines each player's proto-agro value takes the form of:

ProtoAgro = VehicleWeight / Distance

This means that a decrease in your vehicle's weight will allow you to get closer to an AI before it targets you. For example, if a player in a 50-ton vehicle is 250m away from an AI, another player in a 30-ton vehicle would need to be less than 150m away in order for the AI to decide to focus on them instead of the player in the 50-ton vehicle, while a player in a 10-ton vehicle would need to be less than 50m away for the AI to focus on them. Of course, this assumes that distance has a proportional effect on which player is focused when in is entirely possible that the effect of weight or distance is squared (placing a larger emphasis on heavier or closer vehicles, respectively). Some tests would need to be done to determine exactly what the effects of vehicle weight and distance are.

Once an AI has either fired a shot (and had the shot bounce) or taken a damaging hit, the AI will change to the 2nd setting and focus on whatever player (that is currently in their line of fire) has the highest total of damage dealt to that AI and deflected return fire (I'm not sure if there are any modifiers for the total that change the weighting of the dealt/deflected damage stats). If there are no players in line of fire that have damaged the bot or deflected a shot from the bot, the bot will go back to the first setting. It is worth noting that each AI has a separate agro counter, meaning that agroing one bot will not agro any nearby bots (although they will still try to shoot you if you get spotted and have high agro on them).

As far as I can tell, agro will only ever go up, which means that deflecting a several thousand damage worth of autocannon AP from single AFV in an MBT will all but insure that the AI that fired those rounds will never attempt to attack a player that isn't you (as long as it can continue shooting at you). If you break contact with the AI, it will immediately begin attacking the player with the next highest agro total that it has line of sight on (like that TD that got a bit too close and got spotted while shooting up the AI), but will go back to attacking you if it regains contact with you.

What does all of this mean? If you want to minimize the damage you take from bots:

• Let someone with armour be the first one spotted, they can deflect damage and will draw more agro with every shot they deflect
• Try to shoot at the bot that the tanking player is shooting at, they are drawing more agro from that bot than the others
• Don't outpace the agro drawn by the player tanking the damage, otherwise the bots you shot up will try to shoot at you instead. It is easier to outpace the agro for a bot with low DPM (e.g. Challengers) than it is to outpace the agro for a high-DPM bot (e.g. Termi or T-15), so pick your targets carefully
• If you start taking fire, fall back and let the bots go back to shooting at the player who was tanking damage. You can take this time to relocate to a position where you will be less likely to be spotted or will be able to better support your team for the next stage of the mission

Conversely, if you're in an MBT and want to minimize the damage your team takes from bots:

• Make sure you're the first one spotted, any shots you deflect will make the bots that fired them less likely to shoot at your teammates
• Focus on the bots that need to die, this will make them less likely to shoot at your teammates
• Do not break line of sight with the bots if any of your soft-skinned teammates are spotted, otherwise the bots will start shooting up your teammates
• If a bot starts shooting at someone else, shoot it to draw its agro back to you

There was a dev article a while back (almost 2 years ago, right around the time that Heroic spec ops was released) that explained the rules for AI agro. According to the article, the vehicle that the AIs target is based on 2 things:

1. The player in the heaviest and closest vehicle
2. The player with the highest aggro (with aggro being generated by dealing damage to bots and deflecting the return fire according to the article)

When an AI has not fired a shot and not been shot at in return, it defaults to the first setting (this can be seen when spotting a fresh AI vehicle, note how they typically face the nearest MBT even when said MBT is behind multiple layers of cover). I believe the equation that determines each player's proto-agro value takes the form of:

ProtoAgro = VehicleWeight / Distance

This means that a decrease in your vehicle's weight will allow you to get closer to an AI before it targets you. For example, if a player in a 50-ton vehicle is 250m away from an AI, another player in a 30-ton vehicle would need to be less than 150m away in order for the AI to decide to focus on them instead of the player in the 50-ton vehicle, while a player in a 10-ton vehicle would need to be less than 50m away for the AI to focus on them. Of course, this assumes that distance has a proportional effect on which player is focused when in is entirely possible that the effect of weight or distance is squared (placing a larger emphasis on heavier or closer vehicles, respectively). Some tests would need to be done to determine exactly what the effects of vehicle weight and distance are.

Once an AI has either fired a shot (and had the shot bounce) or taken a damaging hit, the AI will change to the 2nd setting and focus on whatever player (that is currently in their line of fire) has the highest total of damage dealt to that AI and deflected return fire (I'm not sure if there are any modifiers for the total that change the weighting of the dealt/deflected damage stats). If there are no players in line of fire that have damaged the bot or deflected a shot from the bot, the bot will go back to the first setting. It is worth noting that each AI has a separate agro counter, meaning that agroing one bot will not agro any nearby bots (although they will still try to shoot you if you get spotted and have high agro on them).

As far as I can tell, agro will only ever go up, which means that deflecting a several thousand damage worth of autocannon AP from single AFV in an MBT will all but insure that the AI that fired those rounds will never attempt to attack a player that isn't you (as long as it can continue shooting at you). If you break contact with the AI, it will immediately begin attacking the player with the next highest agro total that it has line of sight on (like that TD that got a bit too close and got spotted while shooting up the AI), but will go back to attacking you if it regains contact with you.

What does all of this mean? If you want to minimize the damage you take from bots:

• Let someone with armour be the first one spotted, they can deflect damage and will draw more agro with every shot they deflect
• Don't outpace the agro drawn by the player tanking the damage, otherwise the bots you shot up will try to shoot at you instead. It is easier to outpace the agro for a bot with low DPM (e.g. Challengers) than it is to outpace the agro for a high-DPM bot (e.g. Termi or T-15), so pick your targets carefully
• If you start taking fire, fall back and let the bots go back to shooting at the player who was tanking damage. You can take this time to relocate to a position where you will be less likely to be spotted or will be able to better support your team for the next stage of the mission

Conversely, if you're in an MBT and want to minimize the damage your team takes from bots:

• Make sure you're the first one spotted, any shots you deflect will make the bots that fired them less likely to shoot at your teammates
• Do not break line of sight with the bots if any of your soft-skinned teammates are spotted, otherwise the bots will start shooting up your teammates
• If a bot starts shooting at someone else, shoot it to draw its agro back to you

There was a dev article a while back (almost 2 years ago, right around the time that Heroic spec ops was released) that explained the rules for AI agro. According to the article, the vehicle that the AIs target is based on 2 things:

1. The player in the heaviest and closest vehicle
2. The player with the highest aggro (with aggro being generated by dealing damage to bots and deflecting the return fire according to the article)

When an AI has not fired a shot and not been shot at in return, it defaults to the first setting (this can be seen when spotting a fresh AI vehicle, note how they typically face the nearest MBT even when said MBT is behind multiple layers of cover). I believe the equation that determines each player's proto-agro value takes the form of:

ProtoAgro = VehicleWeight / Distance

This means that a decrease in your vehicle's weight will allow you to get closer to an AI before it targets you. For example, if a player in a 50-ton vehicle is 250m away from an AI, another player in a 30-ton vehicle would need to be less than 150m away in order for the AI to decide to focus on them instead of the player in the 50-ton vehicle, while a player in a 10-ton vehicle would need to be less than 50m away for the AI to focus on them. Of course, this assumes that distance has a proportional effect on which player is focused when in is entirely possible that the effect of weight or distance is squared (placing a larger emphasis on heavier or closer vehicles, respectively). Some tests would need to be done to determine exactly what 

Once an AI has either fired a shot (and had the shot bounce) or taken a damaging hit, the AI will change to the 2nd setting and focus on whatever player (that is currently in their line of fire) has the highest total of damage dealt to that AI and deflected return fire (I'm not sure if there are any modifiers for the total that change the weighting of the dealt/deflected damage stats). If there are no players in line of fire that have damaged the bot or deflected a shot from the bot, the bot will go back to the first setting. It is worth noting that each AI has a separate agro counter, meaning that agroing one bot will not agro any nearby bots (although they will still try to shoot you if you get spotted and have high agro on them).

As far as I can tell, agro will only ever go up, which means that deflecting a several thousand damage worth of autocannon AP from single AFV in an MBT will all but insure that the AI that fired those rounds will never attempt to attack a player that isn't you (as long as it can continue shooting at you). If you break contact with the AI, it will immediately begin attacking the player with the next highest agro total that it has line of sight on (like that TD that got a bit too close and got spotted while shooting up the AI), but will go back to attacking you if it regains contact with you.

What does all of this mean? If you want to minimize the damage you take from bots:

• Let someone with armour be the first one spotted, they can deflect damage and will draw more agro with every shot they deflect
• Don't outpace the agro drawn by the player tanking the damage, otherwise the bots you shot up will try to shoot at you instead. It is easier to outpace the agro for a bot with low DPM (e.g. Challengers) than it is to outpace the agro for a high-DPM bot (e.g. Termi or T-15), so pick your targets carefully
• If you start taking fire, fall back and let the bots go back to shooting at the player who was tanking damage. You can take this time to relocate to a position where you will be less likely to be spotted or will be able to better support your team for the next stage of the mission

Conversely, if you're in an MBT and want to minimize the damage your team takes from bots:

• Make sure you're the first one spotted, any shots you deflect will make the bots that fired them less likely to shoot at your teammates
• Do not break line of sight with the bots if any of your soft-skinned teammates are spotted, otherwise the bots will start shooting up your teammates
• If a bot starts shooting at someone else, shoot it to draw its agro back to you

There was a dev article a while back (like 1-2 years ago, right around the time that Heroic spec ops was released) that explained the rules for AI agro. According to the article, the vehicle that the AIs target is based on 2 things:

1. The player in the heaviest and closest vehicle
2. The player with the highest aggro (with aggro being generated by dealing damage to bots and deflecting the return fire according to the article)

When an AI has not fired a shot and not been shot at in return, it defaults to the first setting (this can be seen when spotting a fresh AI vehicle, note how they typically face the nearest MBT even when said MBT is behind multiple layers of cover). I believe the equation that determines each player's proto-agro value takes the form of:

ProtoAgro = VehicleWeight / Distance

This means that a decrease in your vehicle's weight will allow you to get closer to an AI before it targets you. For example, if a player in a 50-ton vehicle is 250m away from an AI, another player in a 30-ton vehicle would need to be less than 150m away in order for the AI to decide to focus on them instead of the player in the 50-ton vehicle, while a player in a 10-ton vehicle would need to be less than 50m away for the AI to focus on them. Of course, this assumes that distance has a proportional effect on which player is focused when in is entirely possible that the effect of weight or distance is squared (placing a larger emphasis on heavier or closer vehicles, respectively). Some tests would need to be done to determine exactly what 

Once an AI has either fired a shot (and had the shot bounce) or taken a damaging hit, the AI will change to the 2nd setting and focus on whatever player (that is currently in their line of fire) has the highest total of damage dealt to that AI and deflected return fire (I'm not sure if there are any modifiers for the total that change the weighting of the dealt/deflected damage stats). If there are no players in line of fire that have damaged the bot or deflected a shot from the bot, the bot will go back to the first setting. It is worth noting that each AI has a separate agro counter, meaning that agroing one bot will not agro any nearby bots (although they will still try to shoot you if you get spotted and have high agro on them).

As far as I can tell, agro will only ever go up, which means that deflecting a several thousand damage worth of autocannon AP from single AFV in an MBT will all but insure that the AI that fired those rounds will never attempt to attack a player that isn't you (as long as it can continue shooting at you). If you break contact with the AI, it will immediately begin attacking the player with the next highest agro total that it has line of sight on (like that TD that got a bit too close and got spotted while shooting up the AI), but will go back to attacking you if it regains contact with you.

What does all of this mean? If you want to minimize the damage you take from bots:

• Let someone with armour be the first one spotted, they can deflect damage and will draw more agro with every shot they deflect
• Don't outpace the agro drawn by the player tanking the damage, otherwise the bots you shot up will try to shoot at you instead. It is easier to outpace the agro for a bot with low DPM (e.g. Challengers) than it is to outpace the agro for a high-DPM bot (e.g. Termi or T-15), so pick your targets carefully
• If you start taking fire, fall back and let the bots go back to shooting at the player who was tanking damage. You can take this time to relocate to a position where you will be less likely to be spotted or will be able to better support your team for the next stage of the mission

Conversely, if you're in an MBT and want to minimize the damage your team takes from bots:

• Make sure you're the first one spotted, any shots you deflect will make the bots that fired them less likely to shoot at your teammates
• Do not break line of sight with the bots if any of your soft-skinned teammates are spotted, otherwise the bots will start shooting up your teammates
• If a bot starts shooting at someone else, shoot it to draw its agro back to you