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Faure

AI Aggro rules?

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So a question I haven't been able to figure out the answer yet. How does the AI prioritize it's targets? I feel I'm always the target, regardless of what I'm driving. As soon as I'm spotted I'm the target. I can be playing a heavy MBT, a light sneaky td or anything in between. I can be the first, up front to be spotted, which makes sense I'm then the target. But if I'm late to the party, fire something, and as soon as I get spotted I am enemy of the state number one again. 
I thought it was damage output, then i thought it was light armor, then i thought it was being lowest tier. I have failed to see any consistency, apart from it being me me me me. (which does flatter my egocentrism, but also my napoleoncomplex)

I think I figured out that if there is multiple targets shooting something and you don't they leave you alone. That's about the only thing I could really test and confirm. But at the same time. I can shoot a tank once, it turns to me. It then takes 100 shots from something else before it starts turning their way, and as soon as I fire again it's back to me. So once again it feels it's me first, rest later.

 

Disclaimer; obviously there is some confirmation bias here, but I'm genuinely curious how the targeting prioritization works.

Edited by Faure (see edit history)
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With great power, comes great electricity bill. 

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I'm quite sure there are some more experienced PVE veterans who can explain this better than me, I'll just share my experience. I searched for some official explanations on this but I couldn't find anything unfortunately. The algorithm, equation or whatever is behind the system is probably not too easy.

What I experience is that if I damage a bot long enough/with sufficient damage and do more damage to it than my allies in general it will prioritize me as a target as my aggro value probably reached a high enough value. This makes sense to me and is quite predictable in my opinion, as you can park yourself besides a T15 Bot without it minding you as long as someone else deals damage to it (and is spotted) and you don't .

Second thing I can imagine is your proximity to the respective bots and if the bot has LOS to you or not. So it probably prioritizes you if you are closer to it compared to the rest of your allies and of course if the bot has LOS towards you and can thus shoot you.

As the third factor I think timing is a key. If you're spotted first by the bots you're most likely the target they shoot first (Maybe they even distinguish between different vehicle classes, just a hypothetical tought). If a bot has no target and you're the first target to be deemed worthy of shooting at (Bot has LOS to you for example) you're probably the first receiving the hits.

7 hours ago, Faure said:

I have failed to see any consistency, apart from it being me me me me.

I don't feel the same way, the bots are quite predictable in my opinion, see T15 example above. I even take advantage of this occasionally. As I'm  often quite agressive and pushing it's quite reasonable that bots target me for the majority of the time.


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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
Edited by MK_Regular (see edit history)
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Didn't have time to post this reply earlier, but well fucking done @MK_Regular. Kudos ;)

I don't play too much PvE, so I can't say I the information you've presented was intended for me, but I'm sure many a PvE player would find your detailed analysis and guide/advice particularly useful/helpful.

@Haswell, can we get this archived/pinned/reposted separately (perhaps as a read-only topic?) so it can serve as an easily accessible reference for all?

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Thanks! These are quite extensive posts :). 


With great power, comes great electricity bill. 

ヽ(。_°)ノ

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My own experience seemingly contradicts every "general rule" that anyone has ever posted.  The bots target me in situations that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, unless somehow your Dossier factors into the equation.  That doesn't really make much sense, so I'm left baffled by situations too numerous to count.

An example: I'm in an AS21 following a teammate PL-01 and Ramka-99.  We're rounding a corner to ambush a bot PL-01.  I'm in 3rd person view because this happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME so I know what to expect and do my best to watch for it.  Teammate PL-01 rounds corner, fires at bot; bot ignores it.  (Might have been reloading?  Sure.)  Teammate PL-01 only gets off one round and then must have had to reload because he just sits there.  A second or two later the teammate Ramka-99 rounds the corner, stops in front of the bot, and opens up with the AC; bot ignores it.  Note that all this time the bot has been tracking me through hard cover, even though I'm not spotted by any enemy bots.  I wait a few seconds just in case the bot is reloading, or I'm actually spotted and just haven't been alerted to it yet by Situational Awareness.  Nope, the bots just sits there, staring at me, while the Ramka-99 slowly eats its health.  As the bot's health grows smaller and smaller, I round the corner to try to get the kill and the bot instantly shoots me, before I've even fully rounded the corner, and it has to shoot between my teammates to do it.  And no, we were not within 50 meters.  I was not spotted until I rounded the corner.

Something like this happens to me in just about every game I play.  It's why I play so cautiously, because most of the time when the bots do this they're also playing in god mode so that they auto-pen no matter how ridiculous the shot is.  Bots fire missiles at me around corners all the time while one or both of us is moving.  Granted, by the time the missile hits there's line of sight between us, but when they're firing they're blocked by hard cover and fire around the corner (or another favorite is over a hill before they - or I - have crested it).

Sometimes I can rationalize the action.  Last game just now I'm in my GAU-8 waiting for the barrel to cool off while aimed at a bot K21.  A teammate Wilk drives in front of me, parks blocking my line of sight, and starts firing.  Asshole.  So as he's firing about his 3rd shot in a row, I pull forward and push him.  Bot K21 immediately shoots me even though I'm mostly blocked by the Wilk.  Okay I can rationalize that it's possible that the Wilk's much better camo made it so that it was still hidden from the bot... but really?  The Wilk fired like 3 times and has weaker armor and less health.  And the bot had to deliberately aim around the massive body of the Wilk to hit me.

FML.

The only thing I can think of is that aggro is cumulative in some way throughout the match.  This kind of crap seems to happen most often in matches when I'm a very high damage dealer, so if all that damage builds me up as a priority over the course of the match that might explain it.  I'd always thought that aggro was per enemy, though, which would mean that damage done early in a match would no longer be applicable to bots that weren't even spawned on the map when that damage was done.

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I don't like not so random behavior when a bot escapes from me towards other players.

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6 hours ago, knutliott said:

 

The only thing I can think of is that aggro is cumulative in some way throughout the match.  

This very much for sure. Though they don't track me when I'm unspotted. I've played a few arty games, where I went TD mode in the end. I had racked up the most damage by far (yay phosphorus) and as soon as I was spotted I got the aggro. Despite many viable targets sitting there for much longer.


With great power, comes great electricity bill. 

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29 minutes ago, Faure said:

This very much for sure. Though they don't track me when I'm unspotted. I've played a few arty games, where I went TD mode in the end. I had racked up the most damage by far (yay phosphorus) and as soon as I was spotted I got the aggro. Despite many viable targets sitting there for much longer.

I usually go TD mode with arty all the way in Pve. And i feel that the moment bots spot me in the arty they reset their agro list and targets me instantly.

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11 hours ago, knutliott said:

The only thing I can think of is that aggro is cumulative in some way throughout the match.

That could very well be the case, and would actually make sense irl. If a bunch of tanks had observed a an enemy take out half of their number, while remaining mostly unscathed, the remaining tanks would prioritize them as the single biggest threat. As such, it would probably make sense if a 'global' agro system was being used in the game.

That said, I have definitely observed bots acting on individual agro levels, so any global agro system would have to work in parallel with the 'individual' agro system. If there is a global agro system, I'd imagine that players would generate global agro much slower than individual agro (probably somewhere between 5%-10% of the values for individual agro) so that bots could still react to players that are a threat to them and not just tunnel vision on the top player (as you claim they tend to do).

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Gah.  Yesterday in a game I was gang-banged through my teammates by several bots right at the start of the game.  I was in my 915, but so were 2 of my teammates and they were in front of me in LOS of the enemies.

I was evidently slow to connect because everyone else started moving before me and had engaged by the time I caught up, yet the instant that I fired (while well to the rear of our formation) about 3-4 bots all turned and shot me taking me into the red less than a minute into the game.  I popped smoke and a FRBK and played extremely conservatively after that, yet continued to get targeted with insane precision any time I was within max view range of bots (the white circle on the mini-map).  I was only able to really contribute when I was outside the white circle from the bots and relying on teammates to spot for me, which of course they didn't understand and were lambasting me for camping and sniping.  I still managed top damage on the team, but basically no spots or spotting damage so came in 2nd overall.

I took just over 4400 total damage in a 915 without dying.  (Vincent with +14.5% health - just over 2500 at full health for the 915 - saved my bacon.)

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Umbrella just now.  I'm in my MGM.  Haven't fired a shot.  45 seconds into the match, a T-15 does 3700 damage to me while I frantically smoke, backpedal, and use my FRBK, shooting past the GAU-8 a good 100 meters in front of me that just annihilated the Bradley sitting next to the T-15 and ignoring the AS21 just to my left in front of me that's peppering it with AC fire.

I'm left with 184 health for the rest of the match.

W.

T.

F.

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Well its nice to have bot behaviour explained in such detail.

That said, as others have commented, my personal experience seems contrary to these rules.

Most recently in a Tier 10 match on Scorpio, I had just been killed near the end of the battle. I decided to respawn. My tank (an XM1A3) re-appears near the near-side end of the bridge, then without firing a single shot, the game spawns a Superior XM1A3 and a T-15 right in my face. The T-15 tracks me almost instantly, then keeps me perma-tracked so it can ATGM me to death.

A few days ago I was playing the C13 TUA on Cerberus (with the flash-reduction / camo while shooting upgrade). I decide to drive up one of the slopes near the edge of the map, to give myself a good view...and immediately get spotted by every AI driving along the bottom of the valley / whatever, to the point I can barely get a shot off. Would like to add I was also trying to use the few bushes up there for cover too.

Similar happens when I play my PL-01 on practically any map. Most notably Watchdog & Sapphire. Even though I have the Adaptive Camo upgrade (which is apparently equivalent to a layer of foliage) and knock over trees to use as cover wherever possible...I STILL get spotted ridiculously often. Quite frequently when the game just happens to spawn a random bot right near my location, so I'm probably proximity spotted...then every AI knows where I am and seems to target me.

So yeah...my experiences don't seem to match the official rules at all.

 

EDIT:

----------

And just to add another one to the list: just tried to have a go at Ghost Hunter in my PL-01. Helped deal with the Bradleys that usually show up at the start...then another bloody T-15 materialises out of nowhere, tracks me and ATGMs me to death. This is inside the first minute of the game. At least 3 of my team mates were further forward than me...yet I got targeted!

 

Edited by dyrewolfe (see edit history)

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