Boosting an actor's strength

[RileyFletcher_01]

Hey, I was designing a mission in Red Square, where the player is pitted one-on-one against an AI sniper. It is too easy to kill the enemy sniper, and I wanted to boost his accuracy and health. I tried editing a few things in the IGOR actor editor, including setting his armor to heavy and increasing all of his stats to 8, but this did nothing as I one-shotted him with a sniper across the map. Is there a way to make an actor that takes like five shots to kill, either that or do you have any ideas on how to make the sniper tougher (not necessarily stronger, just more difficult to kill)?

[Rocky]

Hmm, I can't advise on that aspect, but how about looking at it from the other angle. Make the accuracy of the players weapon much reduced - the effect would be the same... yeh?

[RileyFletcher_01]

Perhaps that would work...thanks Rocky.

[wombat50]

See if setting him to support class helps.

Change this line of an .atr file

<ClassName>demolitions</ClassName>

to

<ClassName>support</ClassName>

No guarantees just a hunch on my end.

[Tinker]

Sniper plan usually works best as:

combat

suppress

move at all costs

stance - which ever

cover - give an arc to cover

Add a defense station, same arc as the cover works nice.

Increase the spotting to match the far fog for the duration of the action

[RileyFletcher_01]

Thanks for the information; made these changes to help:

1. Player has my custom Barrett Light Fifty which holds 1 round like in GRAW and has long stabalization time and high recoil.

2. Enemy sniper has the semi-auto SR25.

3. Fog is set at 100, and the enemy sniper's range is 175, giving him the edge at long range.

Any other ideas for the sniper mission?

Also, should there be more than one sniper as it is very short with just one?

Edited September 17, 2011 by rileyfletcher_01

[Tinker]

Boosting an actor's strength

This can be done in the mission file by actor stats boost. You can run this more than 1 time, each time it will boost the actor stats.

3. Fog is set at 100, and the enemy sniper's range is 175, giving him the edge at long range.

The fog is 100M, the player can only see 100M, but the sniper can see 175M? How does he do this?

[RileyFletcher_01]

The fog is 100M, the player can only see 100M, but the sniper can see 175? How does he do this?

He has x-ray vision

Okay, maybe a bad idea...Anyway, what exactly does ActorStatsBoost do? Increase health or what? I've never done a successful test with it.

Edited September 17, 2011 by rileyfletcher_01

[Tinker]

Not too sure how to describe what ActorStatsBoost does, besides it boosts the actor stats. There are some sniping missions out there that are near impossible, unless you litteraly crawl around the maps. Trial and testing...

[BS PALADIN]

You could look at it completely differently. Have zones where you think the solider should get shot by the sniper and safe zone where there is cover. Then script a X sec trigger for when the solider enters the sniper zones. When X is finished then use a killactor command to simulate getting shot from a sniper. Cancel the timer if the soldier gets into a safe zone.

That means you could encourage the player moving from cover to cover until he can get the shot.

Better to have the sniper moving sporadically as well. Maybe as you move up. Also have the X sec timer be a random number between say 3-5 to give a little randomness into the gameplay.

Hope this helps.

[RileyFletcher_01]

I think that's a good idea, although some problems, such as getting shot through a wall or something, could occur, but if I did this on an open map, e.g. DP04 Wilderness, I could have him stationary and have the player have to move up strategically and kill him. Also, I think, rather than using timers, a TimeElapsed check would be better, since timers are a bit more complicated to use. Perhaps something like this:

Trigger: 5 seconds has elapsed.

Responses:

Allow this block to be reactivated.

Continue if (the number of members of the player-controlled platoon within 1 meter of Sniper's Range Zone is equal to 1 or greater.

Kill the actor nearest Sniper's Range Zone (just make sure nobody else is nearby e.g. more enemies)

That should work. Thanks for the info, everyone.

[Buehgler_AS]

Using timers will result in better "realism" since there is no chance that it triggers just as you enter a zone. The 1-block scheme you outlined runs every 5 seconds, and may run 1/10 of a second after the player enters a danger zone.

If this is really a 1 player vs 1 AI mission, then you can play tricks with view distance vs fog to give the AI an advantage. However, I have never seen a mission that played well where the AI were allowed to see beyond the maximum range of the players. In general limiting the AI to roughly 5m less than the maximum fog clipping distance provides plenty of challenge and provides the players a chance to see the target first (presuming they are paying attention). Changing these limits dynamically in game (yes it requires a fair bit of scripting) can really make things interesting -- just imagine a street you need to cross that has a sniper at the far end, you may need to wait for the weather to close in before you will be able to do it safely.

Also, remember that the weapon stats of the AI weapon matter (optics improve their ability to spot targets), so pick an appropriate weapon and be sure to place the AI actor carefully to ensure their effectiveness. A well placed sniper with an appropriate plan and defense station combined with fog and view distance can be very difficult to deal with. If you are worried about re-playability, then you will need to add a bit of randomness to the placement of the sniper, or maybe to the weather to ensure that no two insertions are the same.

[RileyFletcher_01]

Thanks for the information, Buehgler, that makes sense.