Ground unit AI and performance improvements

[Mohamengina]

It's well known in DCS that having ground units move drastically impacts game/server performance leading to the current state of the game where air to ground missions are done against groups of non-moving targets.

 

Has there been any updates on working to improve this? If not could I request that the devs give us one?

 

[draconus]

On 5/21/2023 at 5:37 AM, Mohamengina said:

Has there been any updates on working to improve this?

Multithreading was added in version 2.8.3. You're gonna ignore it just like that?

[harv]

7 hours ago, draconus said:

Multithreading was added in version 2.8.3. You're gonna ignore it just like that?

But, how does the ED team plan to use this extra bandwidth to improve the behaviour of the ground units? It would be great to see them act in a more believable manner rather than combat resembling a target range. 

Edited May 22, 2023 by harv

[evilnate]

AFAIK, current version of MT divides logic and graphic tasking. They are planning to partition more down the road.

Also planned for future is better path finding for ground units. 

If that information isn’t answering your question, what kind of ground unit behavior are you expecting?

[Mohamengina]

Don't really see any servers with dynamic ground battles happening and one of the reasons that's cited when you ask why is because doing so has a huge impact on performance.

Evilnate's answer pretty much explains how this is going to be addressed further down the line but an update on progress from the devs would be good on how that's going.

[draconus]

Servers do not have MT version yet afaik.

[shagrat]

Am 22.5.2023 um 14:40 schrieb harv:

But, how does the ED team plan to use this extra bandwidth to improve the behaviour of the ground units? It would be great to see them act in a more believable manner rather than combat resembling a target range. 

 

They already did, but nobody noticed... Line Abreast Formation uses fire & maneuver since quite some time ago.

Critical damage affects individual units since years, as in speed reduced the most recent update to that is the change to damaged and incapacitated units smoking now.

Pathfinding has gone through lots of improvement over the last decade...

The point is, mission makers need to balance the fact, that pathfinding and monitoring a dynamic "sensor zone" around a moving unit is an additional calculation that uses up some performance, vs the number of parallel units on a large multiplayer server.

If you place a couple hundred units actively roaming around each airport and multiple front lines and mission goals, all over the map, you will need more compute power to cope with that, than placing groups in fixed positions waiting to be killed.

This isn't something that will magically change.

Only way to address this is to script deactivate ground unit AI while no players are near an area and activate again, when players get in range. Have a limited number of convoys or advancing units any given time. 

Also splitting graphics and logic should not be relevant for a dedicated server, as there is no "graphics" rendered on the server.

[harv]

I think it would just be so cool if after the initial dispersion from coming under fire, they then continued to evade - even retreating in some cases. 

This would add much immersion when flying the A-10 and some of the helicopters. 

[Gunfreak]

2 hours ago, harv said:

I think it would just be so cool if after the initial dispersion from coming under fire, they then continued to evade - even retreating in some cases. 

This would add much immersion when flying the A-10 and some of the helicopters. 

You can script AI to retreat after suffering so so many casualties. Yeah would be much quicker and easier  if you could just add it quick under group options instead of adding lines of triggers.

[harv]

2 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

You can script AI to retreat after suffering so so many casualties. Yeah would be much quicker and easier  if you could just add it quick under group options instead of adding lines of triggers.

I didn't know this. Thank you.

 

I think it should be the default behaviour for all ground units, as should dispersal under fire 

[shagrat]

Am 12.6.2023 um 14:01 schrieb harv:

I didn't know this. Thank you.

 

I think it should be the default behaviour for all ground units, as should dispersal under fire 

AFAIK dispersal under fire is the default. You need to add a setting, to deactivate dispersal and you can adjust the time they wait before moving, again.

Mission creators though intentionally deactivate this to have attacking groups "push" to the objective, or force breaching through an ambush. I know that I do it most of the time, if the mission demands it.

[vracan]

Playing on servers with static ground units is getting so old for me. Makes me wanna go back to warthunder where you at least  feel like you are in a battle and not doing target practice.

Anyone know of any servers where units actually move before I depart DCS and go back to simplified flight dynamics(unfortunatley)?

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, vracan said:

Playing on servers with static ground units is getting so old for me. Makes me wanna go back to warthunder where you at least  feel like you are in a battle and not doing target practice.

Anyone know of any servers where units actually move before I depart DCS and go back to simplified flight dynamics(unfortunatley)?

DDCS has moving (player controlled) ground units and so does Contention I believe.