Possible ? If so what do you think of it ?

[Beast of War]

When playing the game one thing that always strikes me as a waste is that some vehicles are much more vulnerable then they should be.

Not because they were coded the wrong way, or even because of player behaviour, but to the limit of how many players can be on one side in a server.

Take for example a B17......how much gunner positions does that bomber have ? Are they ever occupied in a normal game ?

Wherever divebombers fly, they have usually no rear gunner. Not surprising, because that gunner can do very little due to the limited traverse of his gun(s) and the aircraft can't take that much fire neither.....a dead mans seat, with very prospect of obtaining a score.

Somewhat better is the mg gunners seat in tanks.....although those seats are almost always empty too. Wich makes that vehicle a lot more vulnerable then it could/should be.

Now what if AI could control these vehicle gunner seats, if there isn't a human player in them ? I am not talking about a COOP game here, but a normal conquest game.

All Bombers would fire out of all ports, as they would do in real life, and pose a much more challenging threat for attacking fighters, then the hapless defenseless targets bombers are now, while the server can just be 32 human players or 24 players, and be much more alive.

Same for tanks....have all mgs seat controlled by AI, if there is nu human in them. Then it will be much more challenging to take out a tank for infantry, while being more realistic at the same time. There wil be a greater need for longer ranged weapons to take out tanks, just as in real life, because it is very hard to get close to tanks without being killed.

That bombers and tanks have MG seats is a great feature of FH, but the fact is in 24/32/40 player servers they won't and can't be occupied, making such a vehicle much weaker then in real life. Would it be possible to code AI to control those when not occupied by human players in normal conquest games ? Or is that something DICE programmers would have to do ? And if it would be possible, would it run into massive protest of players who see themselves confronted with a drop in killrate, since these cheap/easy targets now have teeth ? ( wich they should have )

Save me the SDK dances.....rather discuss about what the effect would be in it could be done...

[{SmB}Jackalope]

most people don't have computers to handle this kind of stuff

and, just for instance, how would you stop the ai from going crazy with the battleship aa? which would be twice as bad

Edit : it is a decent idea, though

[Beast of War]

Originally Posted by {SmB}Jackalope

most people don't have computers to handle this kind of stuff

and, just for instance, how would you stop the ai from going crazy with the battleship aa? which would be twice as bad

I want AI to go crazy on battleship/carrier AA !! Finally these ships would defend themselves properly out of all ports in a normal conquest game, when all human players fly around in aircraft....

I don't want a half COOP game where you fight bots, but something that will make small server come alive and offer the human players the challenges they should be facing.

Shooting a one human manned bomber requires no skill at all.....and shoving a AT projectile in a tank with one human player isn't a real challenge neither...

[MG42Maniac]

Originally Posted by {SmB}Jackalope

most people don't have computers to handle this kind of stuff

and, just for instance, how would you stop the ai from going crazy with the battleship aa? which would be twice as bad

Edit : it is a decent idea, though

Then its time for them to upgrade from their P3 800MHZ , 256MB ram and Geforce 3!

[Tas]

Its a decent idea, and it would probably be awesome to have, but as others have said..

LAAAAAAG! In more ways then just one, and maybe i do need to upgrade, but so would _alot_ of others.

[Beast of War]

Does AI cause lag ?? AI is calculated serverside, not client side !

If some players run into stuttering/freezes because their CPU can't handle what is going on, they would have the same problem in servers with a high number of human players.

[Sputty]

Sounds like something not possible, but then again I don't want any AA getting near my precious battleship AA.

[[SYN] hydraSlav]

I don't really care about lag in this issue, although i am sure it will kill my 20FPS to 5FPS.

But if i wanted to play against bots, i would load a COOP game, or better yet fire up some MMORPG (now that's a way to waste money playing against bots). I play online because i want to play against people, not computer.

You can't sneak up on computer, you can't force a computer to make a mistake, a computer will never sneak on you, you can't play mind games with the computer, a computer won't get "distracted", a computer won't try to fool you. A computer won't make a human error. That's why we play online against humans, not computers.

If those MG will be controlled by AI, there will be no reason to have an actual player manning them, cause obviously the AI controlled MG will be more effective and accurate. So you will be promoting less teamwork, cause people in tanks would rather race away from human players that want to get in, so that thier AI MGs could stay

A battleship is a very strong unit in the game. If completely manned, even by average players, it's more then a scary opponent. Keyword here: manned by players. Yes, you will get the full power of the battleship when the team is working together and manning that battleship.

And what do you suggest? Make a battleship a 1-man-army, so that 1 commander in battleship could rule the sea and sky, cause his AI is keeping off all the enemies. Hmm... i thought you were against 1-man-armies? Nice to see you sing a different tune once again, to suit what you want.

Bombers without gunners? Tanks without gunners? You really need to find a good server to play on, cause in my experience, 7/10 times i would chase a bomber, it would have a gunner in it. Skilled or not... well that depends, but at least the gunner is there, laying fire on me, so i can't get a direct shot. I've been shot down by rear gunners, and i've killed planes with rear guns myself. All it takes is teamwork and a good server.

Tank gunners are less common. You want to know why? Cause of stupid tank commanders! That's right. It's the tank commanders fault they don't get gunners, cause they keep turning the turret back and forth and driving the tank, so that gunner doesn't get a good shot. If you want the gunner to do his job, then let him do it, and when you see infantry running, don't twist your main gain, but sit still, so the gunner would have a clear shot to take him off. If you are driving a tank, and your gunner stars shooting, then stop for god's sake, and let him finish off whatever he was shooting.

I've provided a stable platform for a gunner, and he stayed with my tank for the whole game, because everytime he would start firing, i would stop and not move. And whenever there was infantry i could kill easily, i instead left it for the gunner to pick off. I rewarded my gunner by giving him kills. He protected my back from AT. We haven't died the whole game. And that guy wasn't even on the same TS as me, he wasn't even a clan player. He was a regular pubber.

If you can't keep your gunners, then there is something you are doing wrong. If you don't meet enemy bombers with rear guns blazing back at you, you better find another server.

But personally, BoW, i think you need to get yourself a good tank simulator, and play it offline with your AI

[{SmB}Jackalope]

Originally Posted by Beast of War

I want AI to go crazy on battleship/carrier AA !! Finally these ships would defend themselves properly out of all ports in a normal conquest game, when all human players fly around in aircraft....

I don't want a half COOP game where you fight bots, but something that will make small server come alive and offer the human players the challenges they should be facing.

Shooting a one human manned bomber requires no skill at all.....and shoving a AT projectile in a tank with one human player isn't a real challenge neither...

The battleship aa is notorious for causing lag and you can yell at players to stop using it. So my point is how would you stop an ai player from using it? I guess you could just adjust the ai script to ignore that position on the ship.

And the other thing my good buddy slav points out is how do you account for human error with the simplistic ai in this game. You're penalizing the good players by taking away their advantage of having good control under fire, being a quicker, more accurate shot, etc.

[Rafterman]

interesting idea, but i think the weapons are too strong in the hands of AI. take the bomber for example, you could never get near the thing b/c one of the AI guns would fire one shot and hit you in the cockpit. they'd probably even take out aa gunners with one or two rounds as they flew over. tanks would be the same way, you go to sneak up on a tank and the AI commander would spin around instantly and fire one shot and your'e dead